‘This is not over’: Beaufort Co. must prepare for summer of COVID-19 cases, experts say
The head of Beaufort Memorial Hospital is getting worried.
Over the past few days, the medical center has noticed an uptick in symptomatic people coming to the facility and testing positive for COVID-19.
“We are seeing another surge in Beaufort County and South Carolina” said hospital CEO Russell Baxley. “This is not over.”
The county on Friday recorded its highest seven-day average of new COVID-19 cases since the start of the pandemic. And a total of 33 new cases were reported Friday, marking the highest single-day increase this year.
South Carolina, meanwhile, also set a record high for the number of new coronavirus cases announced in a single day Friday, with 770 people testing positive statewide.
Epidemiology experts told The Island Packet that Lowcountry leaders should prepare for a long summer of infections and residents must take social distancing more seriously.
“The trajectory isn’t up like a rocket, it’s up like a slow wave,” said Dr. Scott Curry, an infectious disease specialist at the Medical University of South Carolina.
Hospitalizations
As of Thursday, Baxley said seven COVID-19-positive patients were receiving treatment at Beaufort Memorial. That number is low compared to the coronavirus hospitalizations there in March, he said, when the facility was “bumping up against” ICU bed capacity.
Through May, COVID-19 hospitalizations remained steady at about five to six patients, he added, and there were fewer cases discovered locally. Only three coronavirus-related deaths were reported in the county last month.
But this week, hospital staff saw an increase in symptomatic people who tested positive and were not sick enough to be admitted.
When the pandemic first hit Beaufort County, the hospital had a similar influx of mildly symptomatic people who went home, he said. Some of those individuals, though, returned a week or two later severely ill and needed to be hospitalized.
“If we are in the second surge right now, we are assuming that will be the trend” again, the CEO said. “Hopefully not. We’ll see.”
Hilton Head Hospital and Coastal Carolina Hospital have not seen a “significant increase” in COVID-19 admissions over the past week, wrote a spokesperson for Tenet Healthcare, which owns the two facilities, in a statement Thursday.
As of Friday morning, the Tenet-run regional health care system was treating two patients who tested positive for COVID-19, the spokesperson wrote.
Local officials should keep an eye on the island’s hospital, said Dr. Kathleen Casey, medical director at Greater Bluffton Jasper County Volunteers in Medicine.
If tourists get sick while on vacation, they’ll probably go there, according to Casey, who previously served as chief of infectious diseases at the Jersey Shore University Medical Center.
The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control has sounded the alarm this past week over the state’s rising caseload, repeatedly asking residents to socially distance and wear masks.
“We’re seeing a real increase in disease activity,” said Joan Duwve, DHEC’s director of public health, during a conference call with reporters Thursday.
Expert recommendations
Relaxed social distancing has likely contributed to the spike in cases around the area, Baxley said, as people continue to leave their homes and try to return to “normal.” Memorial Day travel has probably factored into the uptick, too.
As the peak of summer nears — and tourists flock to the beach — Beaufort County residents should follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, he said.
“Set the example for tourists by showing that we are masking, that we are screening, that we are taking every precaution to protect ourselves,” Baxley said.
Dr. Michael Schmidt, a microbiology and immunology professor at MUSC, urged towns in the region to encourage short-term rental owners to leave boxes of masks for guests.
“Now that the supply chain is effectively catching up, we should be able to do that fairly easily,” he said. “I want to make this easy for people. I want to make this a normal behavior.”
Schmidt added that, if out on the beach, residents and tourists should still socially distance and keep at least six feet away from others they don’t know. Wear a mask if that’s not possible, he said.
Grand Strand to the Lowcountry
While Beaufort County has seen a rise in cases, DHEC recently designated Horry County as a “hotspot” for confirmed coronavirus infections. As of Friday, the latter county had recorded over 900 positive COVID-19 cases since the start of the pandemic, while on June 1 that number was 454.
The Grand Strand could be comparable to Florence County, said Curry, who is also an MUSC professor.
“Why do you think Florence got hit so bad? They’re off I-95. They have people from New York City coming down all the time,” he said.
Similar coronavirus issues could pop up just as easily in the Lowcountry this summer, experts said.
Casey, of BJVIM, said Hilton Head Island officials should probably watch Myrtle Beach to see how COVID-19 works its way through the population of a tourism- and hospitality-driven city.
During the conference call with reporters Thursday, DHEC’s COVID-19 “incident commander,” Nick Davidson, acknowledged that case numbers are “certainly higher” in Horry County and Myrtle Beach.
“I don’t have any direct knowledge of clusters that we’ve identified in those areas that are anything other than just increasing community spread,” Davidson said. Tourism could play a role, though, he added.
And regardless of whether a county is on the coast or not — or expecting an influx of tourists on the Fourth of July — Curry said South Carolina will get hit by a “sawtooth” if social distancing doesn’t improve.
“Summer’s going to be rough,” he said.
