SC coronavirus cases top 4,000, state health officials say
South Carolina surpassed 4,000 coronavirus cases Friday — a little more than a month after the first case was identified in the state.
Officials with the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control identified 163 new coronavirus cases, bringing the statewide total to 4,086.
Florence County saw the largest increase Friday with 19 new cases.
Locally, Richland County officials counted 15 new cases and Lexington County posted eight.
The state’s death county is still rising as well. Seven additional COVID-19 related deaths were announced Friday:
- Three patients were elderly with underlying health conditions. They were from Florence, Lexington and Richland counties.
- Three others were from Berkeley, Horry and Lee counties. They were also described as elderly but had no underlying health conditions.
- The final patient, from Sumter County, was middle-aged with no reported underlying health conditions.
A total of 116 South Carolinians have died after contacting the virus.
The first SC coronavirus cases were identified March 6 in Kershaw and Charleston counties. New S.C. cases have been announced nearly every day since, with more than 1,000 cases posted at the end of March.
DHEC also released an estimate of how many patients who contracted the virus over the last two months recovered, saying that 67% have likely overcome the virus.
Case counts have fluctuated as labs have sought chemicals needed to complete tests. Daily case counts, though, have continued to exceed 100 cases a day this month.
State health officials say, though, that about 86% of COVID-19 cases in the state have not been identified or tested. That means the state likely has more than 29,000 cases.
The number of cases is expected to continue to climb. The state will likely see its peak of identified cases around May 2, and DHEC officials have predicted that 572 residents will have died by Aug. 4.
Labs across the state finished 37,640 coronavirus tests by Friday. DHEC’s lab has completed 11,527 tests on its own, 1,400 of which have been positive.
Testing may increase over the coming weeks after DHEC distributed 15 rapid testing machines to struggling areas across the state Wednesday. In addition, hospitals systems are developing their own tests, DHEC officials have said.
As of Friday, 54.2% of S.C. hospital beds are taken, according to DHEC. And state leaders plan to add about 3,000 additional beds across the state by early May.
Meanwhile, several hospitals have furloughed non-frontline employees. Last week, Prisma Health furloughed or reduced hours for 3,900 employees.
Government officials have taken several steps to slow the spread of the coronavirus, and have begun to look forward to the future.
S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster issued a series of orders, including a mandatory “home or work” order, an order closing schools through the end of April, closing dining rooms in restaurants, closing nonessential businesses and allowing police to break up groups of three or more. McMaster also issued an executive order to allow furloughed workers to qualify for unemployment benefits.
Thursday, McMaster issued an executive order to reopen public waterway access points, though he cautioned that boaters should continue to practice social distancing.
The governor also announced his intention to restart the state’s economy by the end of June.
New coronavirus cases
- Aiken (3)
- Anderson (6)
- Beaufort (8)
- Berkeley (5)
- Calhoun (1)
- Charleston (6)
- Cherokee (1)
- Chesterfield (2)
- Clarendon (8)
- Darlington (3)
- Dillon (1)
- Dorchester (6)
- Florence (19)
- Georgetown (1)
- Greenville (10)
- Greenwood (1)
- Hampton (3)
- Horry (11)
- Jasper (1)
- Kershaw (2)
- Lancaster (2)
- Laurens (1)
- Lee (5)
- Lexington (8)
- Marion (6)
- Marlboro (6)
- Newberry (1)
- Orangeburg (1)
- Richland (15)
- Spartanburg (6)
- Sumter (9)
- Williamsburg (1)
- York (4)
This story was originally published April 17, 2020 at 4:50 PM.
