Here is the NC Threat-Free Index for the week ending February 1:

  • As of Feb. 1, there were 683,697 North Carolinians presumed to be recovered from COVID-19
  • Active cases comprised just 9.0% of NC’s total case count (note: a case of COVID isn’t a permanent infection, and only someone with an active case of the virus can conceivably transmit it to you)
  • Active cases represented just over 0.6% (six-tenths of one percent) of NC’s population (note: active cases are lab-confirmed cases of COVID-19 minus recoveries and deaths)
  • About nine out of every ten (89.8%) of NC’s total cases were recovered, meaning they are no longer infectious
  • Only 0.09% of people in NC had died with COVID-19 (regardless of the actual cause of death)
  • Meanwhile, 92.8% people in NC had never had a lab-confirmed case of COVID-19, despite the PCR test cycle threshold set so high as to produce a large amount of false positives (note: this proportion will always decline, but we have been living with this virus since February 2020, as far as testing is concerned)
  • All considered, about 99.3% of people in NC posed no threat of passing along COVID-19 to anyone — a virus most had never had and the rest had recovered from (note: this proportion will fluctuate based on the relative growth in lab-confirmed cases vs. recoveries, and it is likely understated because it does not account for vaccinations)