North Carolina Notes

When North Carolina reports no data, several days of data, or unusual data (such as decreases in values that should increase), our volunteers note it here on the date the anomaly occurred. We also note here changes in our own methodology that affect the data.

The metric reported in our API as totalTestsAntigen only includes tests reported after September, 22, 2020. If previous values become available from North Carolina we will backfill the complete time series.

Negative test results reported in our API and CSVs are calculated by subtracting Confirmed cases from Total PCR tests (specimens) in the absence of better data.

As of March 6, 2021, North Carolina no longer updates their COVID-19 data on Sundays.

On March 3, 2021, we cleared the history of Negative (people or cases) in North Carolina. This number mixed units, but we kept it because we relied on it for totalTestResults. Now, with totalTestResults drawn from totalTestsViral, we no longer need the negatives field to be filled.

As of March 3, 2021, North Carolina's totalTestResults are drawn from totalTestsViral instead of calculated via positive+negative. This update resulted in a drop of 880,339 tests, mostly due to the removal of antigen tests from the number.

On March 2nd, 2021, we backfilled North Carolina's Total PCR tests (specimens) from the state provided dataset. This added 2 months of data to the beginning of the series (March 17, 2020 to May 17, 2020). This update also separates the captured lumped PCR and antigen tests previously stored in Total PCR tests (specimens), starting on September 22, 2020.

On February 28, 2021, North Carolina noted that its data dashboards would not update on that day in order to make changes to improve system performance.

On February 3, 2021, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services reported that the day's case counts were much larger than usual because of the inclusion of a backlog of nearly 8,000 cases identified at FastMed clinics during December 2020 and January 2021.

On January 18, 2021, North Carolina announced on their COVID-19 dashboard that there will be no daily update due to the holiday, and that their data will next be updated on Tuesday, January 19, 2021.

On January 13, 2021, North Carolina reported that technical issues occurring on January 12, 2021 prevented processing of case and testing data into their COVID reporting system. As a result, case and testing data reported on January 13, 2021 are lower than they would have been had all the data been processed, and case and testing data on January 14, 2021 will be increased, since it will include the previous day's data.

On December 30, 2020, North Carolina announced on its dashboard that due to holiday-related disruptions and technical issues, data reported on December 30, 2020 was artificially higher than usual and includes 36 hours of data, while data reported on December 31, 2020 was artificially lower than usual and includes only 12 hours of data.

On December 24, 2020, North Carolina announced on their COVID-19 dashboard that their data would not be updated on December 24, 2020, or December 25, 2020 due to the holiday. On January 1, 2021, they noted that there would be no update to their data on January 1, 2021 due to the holiday.

On November 26, 2020, North Carolina announced on their COVID-19 Data Dashboard that there would be no update to their data on November 26, 2020 due to the thanksgiving holiday. However, on November 27, 2020, they will provide data retroactively for November 26, 2020 and we will backfill our historical data accordingly.

On November 13, 2020, the state of North Carolina announced that they are re-defining hospitalization data based on new guidance, whereby hospitalizations are counted by the entire length of stay and not just by length of isolation. This change will likely affect our Now hospitalized metric for the state

On September 26, 2020, North Carolina started reporting deaths among individuals who had tested positive via antigen. We record this figure in our Deaths (probable) field.

On September 25, 2020, North Carolina started reporting probable cases which caused the Total Cases to increase by 4,563.

On August 12, 2020, North Carolina announced a major correction in its Total PCR tests (specimens), resulting in a decrease of more than 220,000 reported tests.

On July 22, 2020, North Carolina started reporting the number of patients currently in the ICU.