For weeks now, people have been asking why a county of 60,000 people like Haywood hadn’t yet reported a case of COVID-19, even as national, state and local leaders have cautioned that it’s a “when, not if” proposition.

According to a press release issued by the Haywood County Sheriff’s office around 11:15 this morning, that “when” is now.

Ingles Markets, Incorporated has announced its most recent efforts to recognize and support associates during the COVID-19 crisis, which includes hiring thousands of employees and bonuses for current employees.

As a professor in Western Carolina University’s Department of Biology who specializes in immunology and infectious diseases, Mack Powell finds the COVID-19 pandemic particularly interesting.

Macon County Public Health received notice on Wednesday, April 1, that the first Macon County resident has tested positive for COVID – 19. An elderly individual was tested on Thursday, March 26, and was admitted to and is in isolation at an area hospital.

Guys aren’t supposed to sit and wait. Guys are supposed to take action, to get things done.

Yet we seldom get the chance. Most weeks, most months — shoot, most decades — we try to be kind and do what we can.  Sully Sullenberger had been flying for domestic airlines for 29 years: dragging his flight case through terminals, sitting in a pilot’s seat that was still warm from the last guy, flying all over the country, all day long, just to end up in Cincinnati.  Then on a cold January afternoon, about two minutes after he left LaGuardia for two-hour trip to Charlotte, he had a broken airplane over Manhattan.

I am thinking of a scene in the movie “Fargo” that captures exactly how I am feeling a couple of weeks into quarantine. The bad guy needs to bury a suitcase full of money somewhere on a long stretch of highway, so he pulls the car over, grabs the suitcase, and walks over to a barbed-wire fence that runs along the road as far as the eye can see.

It’s Saturday evening at The Sweet Onion in downtown Waynesville. Normally during the time of year, the dining room and bar counter would be packed with locals and tourists alike, servers zipping around in every direction, the open-air kitchen buzzing with orders atop a fiery grill. 

When the first rumors of a strange new contagious pneumonia-like illness began circulating in China late last fall, few could have imagined that the coronavirus outbreak would grow to become the global pandemic that it is today. 

With the realization that students won’t be returning to school until at least May 15, public school systems in Western North Carolina are adjusting their calendars while continuing to educate and feed their students. 

Wendy Williams, a 2005 graduate from Southwestern Community College’s Medical Laboratory Technology program, is now facing the Coronavirus pandemic head on as the Director of Laboratory and Pathology Services for the Appalachian Regional Healthcare System in Boone.