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Fear Of Virus High Among North Carolinians, Survey Finds

In this file photo from March, a worker for Carrboro United retrieves a bag of locally sourced groceries from inside a truck at a pickup location in Carrboro. The food hub is run by restaurant workers who have been laid off due to the COVID-19 coronavirus. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome)

The United Way of North Carolina has released responses to a statewide survey on the social and economic impact of COVID-19.

The agency polled more than 8,500 North Carolinians about the effects the pandemic has had on their lives. 

About 45 percent said they either lost a job or were working fewer hours. The hardest-hit sectors for those who lost employment included agriculture, food service, and retail customer service. 

Child care was also a significant problem for many respondents. Only about one in five said they were able to keep their pre-pandemic child care arrangements.

80 percent said they feared they or a loved one would catch the virus.

The survey covered the period from the start of the pandemic through August. 

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.

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