Tuesday, March 24

  • Citing a steep rise in the demand for gun permits, WAKE COUNTY SHERIFF GERALD BAKER said his office would not process applications until May. 
  • According to a poll, 50 percent of North Carolina voters believe SENATOR RICHARD BURR should resign over his controversial sale of up to $1.7 million in stock just before the market crashed, and Senator Thom Tillis has just a 26 percent approval rating headed into his reelection campaign.

Wednesday, March 25

  • MAYOR STEVE SCHEWEL announced a stay-at-home order for the city of Durham.
  • Duke Health announced that it had joined a national study of the potential COVID-19 drug REMDESIVIR, which showed promise with SARS and MERS, diseases linked to other coronaviruses. 
  • ADRIAN GRUBBS, who worked in Raleigh’s Solid Waste Services for 17 years, died of COVID-19. 
  • STATE TREASURER DALE FOLWELL—who traveled in mid-March despite the whole world agreeing that traveling is a terrible idea right now—announced that he’d been diagnosed with COVID-19. 

Thursday, March 26

  • The state Commerce Department said that since Governor Cooper’s March 16 order closing dine-in restaurants and bars, 195,661 PEOPLE have filed for unemployment in North Carolina, more than the number who filed all of last year. 
  • ORANGE AND WAKE COUNTIES issued stay-at-home orders. 
  • DUKE HEALTH researchers announced that they had found a way to decontaminate and reuse in-demand N95 masks. 
  • State representative and former Durham County commissioner MARYANN BLACK died at the age of 76. 
  • According to new Census Bureau population estimates, WAKE COUNTY became the largest in North Carolina last year, surpassing Mecklenburg by roughly 1,400 people.  

Friday, March 27

  • GOVERNOR COOPER issued a stay-at-home order for all of North Carolina, effective on Monday afternoon. 
  • An internal document obtained by the Triangle Business Journal showed that WAKE COUNTY has a severe shortage of hospital beds and ventilators.

Sunday, March 29

  • CNN reported that the Securities and Exchange Commission and Department of Justice have opened a probe into RICHARD BURR’S stock sale.

Monday, March 30

  • New projections from the University of Washington’s INSTITUTE FOR HEALTH METRICS AND EVALUATION forecast that North Carolina will see its highest death toll on April 22, when 80 people will die. The IHME estimates that more than 2,500 North Carolinians will die of COVID-19 before mid-July. 

Tuesday, March 31

  • MARCH 2020, the longest month in recorded history, comes to an end. Let us never speak of it again. 

Contact editor in chief Jeffrey C. Billman at jbillman@indyweek.com. 

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