  On June 24th, Governor Cooper announced that North Carolina will not be
moving into Phase 3 of its reopening process at least until July 17th. Given
the recent increases in daily positive cases and hospitalizations, this
decision was not surprising. However, given the political and economic
pressures which are forcing the state to reopen, it is not clear what actions
will help North Carolina to avoid the worst. We use a compartmentalized model
to study the effects of social distancing measures and testing capacity
combined with contact tracing on the evolution of the pandemic in North
Carolina until the end of the year. We find that going back to restrictions
that were in place during Phase 1 will slow down the spread but if the state
wants to continue to reopen or at least remain in Phase 2 or Phase 3 it needs
to significantly expand its testing and contact tracing capacity. Even under
our best-case scenario of high contact tracing effectiveness, the number of
contact tracers the state currently employs is inadequate.
