SC surpasses 11,000 COVID-19 cases Friday after the state sees largest daily increase
South Carolina surpassed 11,000 coronavirus cases Friday after state health officials announced that 331 additional people tested positive for the virus.
The announcement marks the Palmetto State’s highest number of new cases on a single day.
Thirty-eight of South Carolina’s 46 counties posted new cases, according to a statement from the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control.
Greenville County saw the largest increase in cases with 75, tying it with Richland County for the most cases.
In the Midlands, Richland County posted 26 new cases, and Lexington County saw seven.
DHEC officials said it’s unclear why they saw such an unusually high number of cases on Friday.
“We’ve been looking at the numbers to see if we could try to understand what this is attributable to,” Director of Public Health Joan Duwve said. “We haven’t really identified a pattern.”
Duwve said on Fridays and Saturdays, it’s typical to see higher case numbers than earlier in the week.
“It may be that more people who aren’t feeling at the end of the week seek testing,” Duwve said.
The COVID-19 death toll reached 483 after 13 more South Carolinians died after contracting the coronavirus.
Eight of the patients who died were elderly, and lived in Berkeley (1); Darlington (1); Fairfield (1); Florence (2); Greenville (1); Horry (1) and Spartanburg (1) counties. Five were middle aged, and were from Florence; Laurens; Lee; Saluda and Williamsburg counties.
State health officials believe that as many as 86% of coronavirus cases in South Carolina have gone unidentified. As of Friday, DHEC estimated that 79,500 Palmetto State residents have had COVID-19 but were not tested.
Over the few weeks, DHEC’s data has shown an increase in coronavirus activity. The percentage of positive COVID-19 tests has steadily increased over the last 14 days.
State health officials project South Carolina will see an increase in positive tests each week until at least the second week of June. By then, they expect to see 1,400 cases a week.
The increase could be because of DHEC’s expanded testing strategy. The agency’s plan includes testing about 2% of South Carolina’s population in May and again in June. Officials have completed more than 110,000 tests in May, meeting their goal.
In total, labs across the state have completed 194,047 tests.
But some experts are worried the increase in cases could be due to South Carolinians’ increased mobility, and could lead to later COVID-19 outbreaks.
Since April 20, Gov. Henry McMaster has been incrementally reopening businesses. But both he and DHEC officials have continued to urge residents to practice social distancing.
DHEC has taken other steps to help with a safe reopening, including increasing their contact tracing staff from 20 to 380. They’ve also contracted with private companies to hire 1,400 more.
New coronavirus cases
Abbeville (2)
Aiken (2)
Anderson (8)
Beaufort (10)
Berkeley (4)
Calhoun (1)
Charleston (8)
Cherokee (1)
Chester (3)
Chesterfield (11)
Clarendon (1)
Colleton (6)
Darlington (14)
Dillon (1)
Dorchester (11)
Fairfield (5)
Florence (16)
Georgetown (3)
Greenville (75)
Greenwood (7)
Horry (14)
Kershaw (7)
Lancaster (3)
Laurens (2)
Lee (3)
Lexington (7)
Marion (1)
Marlboro (12)
Newberry (4)
Oconee (1)
Orangeburg (7)
Pickens (8)
Richland (26)
Saluda (3)
Spartanburg (22)
Sumter (6)
Williamsburg (2)
York (14)
This story was originally published May 29, 2020 at 3:30 PM.
