Chief physician at NHRMC expects another rise in COVID-19 cases
By Frances Weller | October 15, 2020 at 11:56 PM EDT – Updated October 16 at 12:27 AM
WILMINGTON, N.C. (WECT) – On the same day North Carolina health officials reported the highest one-day number of new COVID-19 cases, the chief physician at New Hanover Regional Medical Center said those numbers are likely to climb.
“Most definitely,” said Dr. Philip Brown, Chief Physician at NHRMC. “It would appear from the trajectories that we’ve been looking at from our predictive modeling now is our next peak is somewhere during election week. Sometime around there we’ll see the next peak in COVID cases.”
Brown attributes some of the increase in cases to complacency. He says now that businesses are opening back up and children are going back to school, people are easing up on precautions.
“The biggest thing that’s driving it right now is a little bit of complacency around masking at a time when our whole society is as open as it has been during the course of the pandemic.,” Brown said. “So it’s incredibly important to get back in the masks and really be diligent about that because that’s our one way to truly combat this.”
Copyright 2020 WECT. All rights reserved.