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As of Monday morning, there were four laboratory-confirmed cases of coronavirus in Tyrrell County, state health officials reported.

Tyrrell’s first case was reported April 13, but the number jumped quickly during the week.

Tyrrell became the 93rd county in North Carolina to report cases of COVID-19 among its inhabitants.

Vickey Manning at Martin-Tyrrell-Washington District Health Department, said Monday morning that health officials cannot specify the age, race, gender, address or other data on coronavirus victims in the district. “Because we are so small [sparsely populated], we are not able to release anything that might even come close to identifying” the individuals involved.

The Department of Health and Human Services on Monday reported 6,764 laboratory-confirmed cases in North Carolina. Of that total 179 have died, and 373 are currently hospitalized. Tests have been completed on 79,484 of the more than 10 million Tar Heel residents.

DHHS also posted the following information on how North Carolina counts COVID-19 cases.

Recognizing the threat posed by COVID-19, North Carolina acted in early February to add COVID-19 to the lists of conditions that physicians and laboratories are required to report to the state. This means that all positive tests results must be reported to the state. The number of laboratory-confirmed cases has been tracked since that time.

Health providers determine to which lab they send their COVID-19 tests. There are multiple hospital and commercial labs that conduct tests. These labs manage their own supplies and operate independently from the Department of Health and Human Services and the North Carolina State Laboratory of Public Health.

North Carolina will continue to track and post the number of laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 cases. However, it is important to recognize that there are many people with COVID-19 who will not be included in daily counts of laboratory-confirmed cases, including:

– People who had minimal or no symptoms and were not tested.

– People who had symptoms but did not seek medical care.

– People who sought medical care but were not tested.

– People with COVID-19 in whom the virus was not detected by testing.

Therefore, the number of laboratory-confirmed cases through testing will increasingly provide a limited picture of the spread of infections in the state as COVID-19 becomes more widespread and the number of people in the first three groups above increases.