Beaufort Co.’s COVID-19 trends are getting worse. Here’s a look at the latest data
Beaufort County’s COVID-19 spike continued to accelerate over the weekend.
The county’s seven-day average of newly confirmed infections, as of Monday, rose to 63 cases per day. That’s the highest the average has been since early February.
The average positivity rate, meanwhile, skyrocketed to 17% — a level last seen during the worst days of Beaufort County’s winter surge.
The positive news: No additional COVID-19 deaths were recorded in the county this past weekend, according to the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control.
Since the beginning of June, DHEC has reported only two coronavirus fatalities in Beaufort County, state data show. That’s likely due to the high vaccination rate among local seniors.
Reports of new COVID-19 deaths, however, tend to lag weeks behind case surges. And the county’s largest medical center is now treating unvaccinated residents who recently contracted the pathogen.
Beaufort Memorial Hospital, as of Friday, had 21 coronavirus patients. Six of those people were in the intensive care unit. All were unvaccinated, according to hospital CEO Russell Baxley.
A spike in COVID-19 fatalities could occur in Beaufort County sometime later this month. It remains unclear, though, whether local coronavirus deaths will rapidly mount like they did last summer, even as the super-contagious Delta variant pummels South Carolina.
More than 23% of Beaufort County’s COVID-19 cases in July were recorded among 11- to 20-year-olds, DHEC data show. Just 1.3% of infections, meanwhile, were among people 81 or older. (In comparison, 18.4% of the county’s cases in July 2020 were identified in kids aged 11 to 20.)
Teenagers and children typically fare better with the coronavirus than older adults. But kids can still become severely ill in rare cases or spread COVID-19 to elderly, unvaccinated family members, experts say.
DHEC is pleading with unvaccinated residents to roll up their sleeves for a shot. The vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson are extremely effective at preventing severe disease in Delta cases, experts say.
About 58.3% of Beaufort County residents 12 or older have received at least one dose of a vaccine, according to DHEC and U.S. Census Bureau estimates.
Here’s a look at DHEC’s latest COVID-19 data for the county:
New cases reported Monday: 79 confirmed, 16 probable
New cases reported Sunday: 57 confirmed, 21 probable
New cases reported Saturday: 97 confirmed, 30 probable
Deaths reported Monday, Sunday and Saturday: 0
Seven-day case average: 63 confirmed infections per day
Two-week incidence rate: 478.9 cases per 100,000 people
Note: Data in this story are current as of Monday afternoon.
This story was originally published August 2, 2021 at 3:04 PM.
