Mecklenburg County Manager Dena Diorio said the county, city and the six towns have agreed to issue a "stay at home" order starting at 8 a.m. Thursday.
Diorio said there will be some exceptions to the order. People will still be able to go to the pharmacy and grocery stores. They also will be able to get take-out food.
But all “nonessential” travel is now prohibited until midnight April 16.
“You can go see a health care professional, you can go to a restaurant for food,” she said. “You can go outside to take a walk. But you can’t go to work unless you provide essential services. You can’t visit loved ones.”
She said the county order will be modeled after stay at home orders from San Francisco and Illinois.As of Tuesday afternoon, Mecklenburg county was reporting 142 confirmed cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. That’s about a quarter of the total number of confirmed cases in North Carolina. Diorio says modeling shows that the number of cases in the state could double every two days.
“Eighty percent of the cases in the county are below the age of 59, which is an indication that older residents are heeding the warning to stay at home while younger residents are not,” Diorio said.
Local hospital systems Atrium Health and Novant Health support the order, according to the county.
Full details on the order can be found here.
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