COVID outbreak on town council forces SC town to cancel meeting
An S.C. town had to postpone its town council meeting this week because of an outbreak of COVID-19 among the council members.
Chapin announced Thursday that its scheduled council meeting that day would be canceled after the five-member council was hit with a series of positive cases and prolonged exposure to the coronavirus.
“Several members of the Chapin Town Council have been exposed to or have tested positive for COVID-19,” an emailed notice from the town said. “Out of an abundance of caution, the Chapin Town Council meeting for January 13, 2022 at 3:00 p.m. has been cancelled.”
The council meeting would be rescheduled at a later date, the town said.
The council members are the latest to be hit by a rise in COVID-19 cases across South Carolina in recent weeks. The Lexington-Richland 5 school district, which includes Chapin, announced Thursday that schools will shift to virtual instruction until the middle of next week because rising COVID cases and the mandated quarantine period had left the district unable to staff all its classes.
In November, South Carolina was averaging fewer than 600 COVID-19 cases per day, but has since surged to an average of more than 13,700 new cases averaged per day — the highest at any point during the pandemic. That surge is partly attributed to the rise of the highly contagious omicron variant of the disease.
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