NC Gov. Cooper announces grant program for businesses hurt in the coronavirus pandemic

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said Thursday the state is starting its new job-retention grant program for businesses and non-profits jeopardized by the pandemic economic slowdown.

Businesses that have not received money from other programs could be eligible for up to $250,000 each, Cooper said at a Thursday news conference. The deadline to apply is Sept. 1.

The $15 million program, which was approved in July by the N.C. Commerce Department, is being funded by federal coronavirus relief money.

“I know that this pandemic has made things tough for many of our state’s businesses and non-profits,” Cooper said Thursday. “It’s important that we support them as they seek to do right by their employees and their customers.”

To qualify for the grants, applicants cannot have participated in the federal Paycheck Protection Program or Main Street Loan Program, or the state Rapid Recovery Loan Program. Businesses and nonprofits applying must also have kept at least 90% of its full-time employees in North Carolina at the end of June as they did at the end of February.

They also must have had at least a 10% reduction in sales or receipts comparing March to May this year to last year.

Grants could be awarded by early October through the N.C. Department of Commerce.

Businesses encourage to enforce the mask mandate

Enforcement of the statewide face mask mandate has fallen to many businesses, which post signs on their front doors about the mask requirement.

“We are encouraging businesses to take control here,” Cooper told reporters. He said it is good business for them. He also encouraged retail store customers to tell management if they see people not wearing masks.

N.C. Public Safety Secretary Erik Hooks said they want more community oriented-reporting strategy about face masks. He said the encourage people in the community and businesses to voluntarily comply with the law.

Hooks said that law enforcement may occasionally have to enforce the law, but are not asking them to go out an arrest people. He said they could issue a citation instead.

Errors in testing data

North Carolina added 1,763 new coronavirus cases Thursday, bringing the total to 140,824 in the state since the pandemic reached the state in early March.

On Wednesday, the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services revealed an error in its data that resulted in more than 221,000 coronavirus tests than were actually performed.

LabCorp, a national diagnostic company, had mixed in with its North Carolina numbers tests that were performed on people from out-of-state. The state agency handled two streams of data, one manual and the other electronic. The electronic data was accurate, and was used to report case counts and other information that appears on its COVID-19 dashboard, DHHS said. The incorrect manual data was used since April to report total tests.

Numbers of new cases have been trending down, and positivity percentage has fluctuated between 6% and 8%.

“Positive cases and percent positives remain unchanged,” Dr. Mandy Cohen, NC DHHS secretary, told reporters in a phone call Thursday. Cooper said that the lack of a federal testing strategy has left it up to the states.

At the news conference, Cohen said key metrics — new cases, hospitalizations, the percent of positive tests and people going to hospitals with COVID-like symptoms — have stabilized.

“Our progress is fragile,” she said, and precautions to prevent viral spread are still necessary.

“I see a challenge in front of us,” Cohen said, with school back in session and people moving around more. The next flu season will also present challenges.

Coronavirus test turnaround improves

Tests completed daily are trending down, too. Cohen said in the telephone call that she did not know why, but speculated that people may have been put off by news about long waits for test results. People had been waiting seven days or longer for their coronavirus test results.

“We’ve seen it improved,” she said. “It’s back to two to three days. I don’t know if it impacted folks wanting to get testing. Our lab through-put capacity, the number of tests labs can do, has improved.”

The state Republican Party chided the Cooper administration for the error, and said in a press release that it should give news organizations COVID-19 information that they are suing to obtain under the state Public Records Act.

“This startling admission by Cooper and Cohen raises more questions than it answers,” Tim Wigginton, NC GOP spokesperson, said in the press release. “Cooper’s favorite line to justify his draconian measures on North Carolina small businesses and families is ‘science and data’. In violation of public records law, he’s refused to release either and now we know there is a huge problem with the ‘data’ Cooper and Cohen purport to base their decisions on.”

Cooper said at the news conference that the data used to make decisions is “good data.”

“We want to make sure that the data is leading us, and we also want to make sure it is correct,” he said.

This week a Wake County Superior Court judged ruled against Lt. Gov. Dan Forest’s lawsuit against Cooper over the coronavirus shutdown orders. Forest dropped the lawsuit, which questioned Cooper’s authority in state law to issue some executive orders without agreement from the Council of State, after the ruling.

This story was originally published August 13, 2020 at 2:28 PM with the headline "NC Gov. Cooper announces grant program for businesses hurt in the coronavirus pandemic."