Need a free COVID-19 test? Here’s when to get tested in Beaufort, Jasper counties
Five free coronavirus testing clinics will open over the next few weeks in Beaufort and Jasper counties.
No appointments or doctors’ referrals are needed at the events:
A “pop-up” testing clinic on Wednesday at Lady’s Island Middle School from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. Beaufort Memorial Hospital is hosting the event with the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control, among other agencies.
A drive-thru testing clinic on Friday at St. Stephen AME Church in Hardeeville scheduled for 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. Tenet Healthcare helped organize the event.
A mobile clinic on July 22 from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. at Bluffton High School.
A testing event on July 29 from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. at Battery Creek High School in Beaufort.
A “pop-up” testing site at Hilton Head High School on Aug. 5 from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m.
State Sen. Tom Davis (R-Beaufort) has urged DHEC to line up more COVID-19 testing events in Beaufort County.
In an email to Marshall Taylor, the agency’s interim director, Davis on July 1 asked DHEC to run or assist with nine free clinics in the county through July and August.
Taylor told Davis that “while DHEC is committed to testing, we want to be transparent about some of the limitations and obstacles we face,” emails show.
“The administration of tests by DHEC on any significant scale is problematic because of the limited number of DHEC staff that can collect specimens,” Taylor wrote July 2. “Due to the increasing number of cases, DHEC staff is currently focused on assisting with case investigations.”
DHEC has reported a surge of coronavirus infections around the Palmetto State in recent weeks. As of Monday, over 58,000 people in South Carolina have tested positive for COVID-19 since March, DHEC data show.
The percent of viral tests that have returned positive in South Carolina over the past 28 days rose from 13.4% in mid-June to 21.2% on July 12, data show.
Beaufort County, meanwhile, has logged record-breaking daily highs of new coronavirus cases in the past week, and over 2,000 infections have been discovered in the county since the pandemic began.
“We knew better from the experiences of New York, and New Jersey, and Italy, and we chose to ignore it,” said Michael Schmidt, a microbiology and immunology professor at the Medical University of South Carolina, in an interview Friday. “We have at least a month more of hurt and pain.”
“South Carolina is literally where New York City was in early April,” he said.
