Beaufort Co. reports no new COVID-19 cases in recent days; no Memorial Day spike in SC
Beaufort County recorded zero new COVID-19 cases on Tuesday, Sunday and Saturday, as the Lowcountry’s coronavirus outbreak continued to wane.
The county last reported zero daily infections in May 2020.
Health officials are increasingly optimistic about the pathogen’s slower spread. There’s no evidence of a post-Memorial Day surge of infections, said Dr. Brannon Traxler, the state’s director of public health.
(Nineteen cases were confirmed in Beaufort County on Monday, but that slight uptick coincided with a deluge of newly reported test results.)
Life is steadily returning to normal, even as experts caution that coronavirus variants such as Delta, which was first discovered in India, may hit unvaccinated residents hard.
Four Delta cases have been confirmed in South Carolina, Traxler told reporters Wednesday.
The new variant, which was previously linked to India’s devastating wave of COVID-19 cases earlier this year, is highly transmissible and appears to evade part of the body’s vaccine-induced immune response.
What are experts saying?
“You would think that a Saturday drive-thru (vaccine) event would work, but we found that doing it in the morning makes it difficult. (Cleaning workers) are turning over rooms until 2 or 3 p.m., so trying to do an event early in the morning, thinking that would help, sometimes doesn’t reach the people that you might be trying to get,” said Dr. Faith Polkey, chief clinical officer at Beaufort Jasper Hampton Comprehensive Health Services, of efforts to vaccinate hourly workers south of the Broad River.
Vaccine trends
The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control will no longer publish its vaccine data on Saturdays and Sundays, making it impossible to calculate the local seven-day average of new first-dose inoculations.
Roughly 53.8% of Beaufort County’s 12 and up population, as of Wednesday, had received at least one dose.
The state’s vaccination rate is still lagging. About 46.4% of residents 12 or older have been at least partially inoculated.
Case trends
Beaufort County’s seven-day average of new infections has dropped to roughly 3.7 cases per day.
Experts, though, remain worried that a spike in cases is possible among unvaccinated residents sometime this summer.
“In other areas where they have seen declines in disease rates, they saw reopenings and relaxation of protective measures, and cases again increased,” said Dr. Linda Bell, the state’s top epidemiologist. “That is a potential concern for us, but getting our vaccination rates up more quickly will help us prevent that surge here.”
Latest COVID-19 research
Pfizer-BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine is still highly protective against the new Delta variant, according to an analysis from Public Health England.
The agency found that two doses of the Pfizer vaccine are 96% effective at preventing COVID-19 hospitalizations in Delta cases.
The analysis, which was published Monday, included data on over 14,000 Delta infections.
What else is going on?
BusinessATTRACT, a volunteer group on Hilton Head Island, wants to partner with a local church to host a vaccine event for Latino residents who work six days a week, said Carlton Dallas, the group’s organizer.
The event, Dallas said, could take place after a Sunday Mass.
“What we try to do is bring (the vaccine) to them,” he said.
BusinessATTRACT previously worked with DHEC and the town of Hilton Head Island Fire Rescue to host a Moderna vaccine clinic at Christ Lutheran Church.
Only about 26.3% of Beaufort County’s Hispanic or Latino residents have received at least one dose, according to DHEC data and U.S. Census Bureau estimates.
Note: Data in this story are current as of Thursday morning.
