Governor Roy Cooper announced on Wednesday that Phase 2 of reopening North Carolina will continue until September 11.

Cooper’s executive order was slated to expire on Friday, August 7. However, the new order extending Phase 2 is due to the state seeing rising trends of daily positive COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, according to state health officials.

This is the third time that the governor has extended North Carolina reopening as coronavirus continues to spread throughout the state. This latest extension will last five weeks.

As of Wednesday, North Carolina is reporting 129,288 COVID-19 cases and 2,050 deaths from the virus. North Carolina health officials are reporting that 105,093 residents have presumed to have recovered from coronavirus.

“Stable is good, but decreasing is better,” Cooper said. “While we are seeing stabilization of our numbers, that doesn’t mean we can let up.”

Cooper’s decision to extend Phase 2 comes as schools across the state prepare for the start of the fall semester. The governor had previously announced that schools will reopen in August under a “Plan B” model – allowing the option for either in-person or remote learning.

Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools decided last week that it will operate entirely online until 2021 due to the outbreak of coronavirus. Interim Superintendent Jim Causby said the district could return to in-person classes earlier if coronavirus trends reverse.

Meanwhile, UNC and other colleges across the state are beginning to welcome back students to campus. UNC’s decision to allow students to return to campus for in-person classes is against what Orange County health officials have recommended for the university. Last week, county Health Director Quintana Stewart wrote a letter to campus leadership encouraging them to consider having classes online at least for the first five weeks of the semester.

Cooper said with the opening of schools and lifted restrictions across the nation, other states have had to go backward as their hospital capacity ran dangerously low and their cases jumped higher.

“We won’t make that mistake in North Carolina,” Cooper said.

On July 31, the governor enacted a statewide curfew, forcing restaurants, breweries, wineries and distilleries to stop selling alcoholic drinks after 11 p.m. as bars remained closed.

That curfew will remain in effect through August 31.

On Wednesday, some UNC health experts expressed their full support for Cooper and his decisions.

Dr. Jane Brice, Chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine within the UNC School of Medicine, said she would have trusted Cooper’s decision even if he chose to push for Phase 3 of reopening the state.

“I think they have done an amazing job in guiding our state and keeping us safe and keeping this disease manageable,” Brice said. “They work from science and from data – which is near and dear to my heart as well. If Governor Cooper and Mandy Cohen think it’s time to move to the third level then I’m in. We will manage this, we will make this work because they have done a really amazing job and I am following their lead.”

Featured image via the NC Department of Public Safety

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