It's too early to tell if mitigation efforts are working in North Carolina's fight against COVID-19, Dr. Tilson says

RALEIGH (WTVD) -- Dr. Elizabeth Cuervo Tilson, the State Health Director and the Chief Medical Officer for the Department of Health and Human Services, joined us on Wednesday to answer your questions about COVID-19.

Here are some of the questions we asked:

It's been 3 weeks since the first confirmed case of the novel coronavirus in North Carolina. Now we're at 500. Is there any sense that mitigation efforts are helping slow the spread?

It's still a little bit too early to tell and you remember we've been increasing some of our community mitigation strategy so it's going to take a little bit of time to see the effect of them. We did just get some new data today that looked at least the effect of people not moving and we've had a pretty significant decrease in the amount of people moving, I think about a 37 percent decrease in people moving around so we know at least it's had some effect on people moving. We're still going to have to wait a little bit in terms of how that will play out into the number of new cases that we have.

Are blood donors tested for COVID-19 before donating and are they screening blood that's being donated right now in a different way?

People who are sick with any respiratory virus or any illness should not be giving blood. In general respiratory illnesses are not transmitted through blood so it is considered safe to receive a blood donation.

Does Ibuprofen worsen the virus?

There was a report or a statement that came out of France that suggested that Ibuprofen might worsen your symptoms if you had an infection with COVID-19. Since then there hasn't really been any other scientific studies to back that up so we're still looking and following the data on that so right now I would say that the data is very inconclusive.

Watch more from Dr. Tilson in the media player above.

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