South Carolina seeing more cases of children with COVID-19, medical officials say. What to know
Cases of COVID-19 have risen among children in South Carolina and parents are urged to get them vaccinated, some physicians say.
Dr. Robin Lacroix, medical director of Prisma Health Children’s Hospital in the Upstate and pediatric infectious disease physician, said on Tuesday that the state has seen a wave of children infected with COVID-19 in recent weeks. It’s a worrying trend in keeping with growing cases of the virus in general across the state and particularly because students will soon return to school.
“Clearly in the pediatric population, we have seen a rising number of children being infected with COVID-19,” Lacroix said. “It’s much higher than what we had seen in the spring when we had higher COVID infections.”
South Carolina has seen COVID cases explode in the summer months after a short period of lower activity.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently updated its community levels map to include a whopping 32 South Carolina counties with high levels of COVID-19. Another 13 counties were noted to have medium levels. A month ago, the CDC reported just six South Carolina counties had high levels of COVID-19.
The CDC recommends communities with high levels of COVID-19 use masks while indoors, including in schools and workplaces.
The latest DHEC data shows that as of July 16, cases of COVID-19 cases were up 15.5% in the state over the previous month. COVID-19-related hospitalizations were up 43.7% over last month. There were 13 COVID-related deaths last week.
“COVID is actually really problematic … it’s probably the largest number we’ve ever seen, it’s just nobody is really tracking it anymore,” said Dr. Helmut Albrecht, medical director of the Center of Infectious Diseases Research and Policy for Prisma Health. “Everybody stopped doing anything about it.”
In the case of children, they’ve been outside playing and doing other activities together, Lacroix said.
“It’s been very hot … kids are outside playing … it does lend to very efficient virus transmitting person to person,” she said.
Lacroix recommended that parents have their children vaccinated, especially since the vaccine for kids 6 months to 5 years old was readily available.
“It’s a very safe vaccine,” she said. “Prior to this, we were not able to protect this younger generation.”
For information on how to get a vaccine for anyone in South Carolina 6 months old or older, click here.
This story was originally published July 20, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
