SC official says delta variant ‘remains strong’ as Beaufort Co. COVID-19 trends improve
Beaufort County’s coronavirus trends continued to improve rapidly this past week as the summer’s wave of delta variant infections receded across the Lowcountry.
The county’s seven-day average of new cases, as of Friday, dropped to 23 infections per day. A week ago, the average was 32 cases per day.
Beaufort Memorial Hospital, meanwhile, reported Thursday that it was treating only 23 coronavirus patients. Almost 96% of those people were unvaccinated, hospital data show.
In comparison, the hospital on Sept. 24 had 33 COVID-19 patients.
Beaufort County’s test positivity rate also has plummeted. The seven-day rate, as of Wednesday, was 5.7%. It was 10.8% two weeks before that.
Dr. Jane Kelly, assistant state epidemiologist, told reporters this week that cases are dropping statewide due to several factors, including a slow rise in vaccination rates.
“We can’t put this pandemic behind us yet, though,” Kelly warned on Wednesday. “I would caution people to not consider that we may have turned a corner, but rather to say ... ‘We have a downward trend that we hope to maintain.’
“We are all certainly concerned that with the upcoming winter holidays, people may be traveling, people may be getting together in indoor settings with other individuals who are not household members, and if people are not vaccinated, that’s certainly an additional risk.”
Kelly added that the delta variant “remains strong” and has recently accounted for more than 97% of new COVID-19 cases in South Carolina and the nation as a whole.
What’s happening in schools?
COVID-19 cases and quarantines at the Beaufort County School District have decreased dramatically in the past few weeks.
At Tuesday’s school board meeting, Superintendent Frank Rodriguez reported that between Sept. 25 and Oct. 1, the district recorded 40 new COVID-19 cases — 37 among students and three among staff.
In the same time frame, 250 students and 16 staff were actively quarantining, he said — about one-fifth of the 1,254 active quarantines reported for the previous week.
Both numbers are down from a peak of 236 new infections and 2,888 active quarantines recorded between Aug. 30 and Sept. 5, just a month earlier.
In total, the district has logged at least 1,253 student infections and 128 staff infections since the school year began on Aug. 16.
The Lowcountry also has lost another educator to COVID-19: Colette Fogle, a kindergarten paraprofessional at Royal Live Oaks Academy of The Arts and Sciences in Hardeeville, who died Sept. 23 of COVID-19 complications. She was 52 years old.
Fogle is at least the third Lowcountry educator who has died of COVID-19. Terry Wisdom, a Gateway to Technology teacher at Bluffton Middle School, died earlier this month; in September of 2020, Margie Kidd, a first-grade teacher at Jasper County’s Ridgeland Elementary School, died of COVID-19 complications.
Rodriguez said Sept. 30 that he was “not aware of any student that we have lost to COVID” in the district.
Countywide data
Here are the latest Beaufort County coronavirus numbers from the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control:
New cases reported Friday: 26 confirmed, 21 probable
New cases reported Thursday: 16 confirmed, 6 probable
New cases reported Wednesday: 18 confirmed, 22 probable
New deaths reported from Wednesday to Friday: 1 confirmed, 1 probable
Seven-day average of new cases: 23 confirmed infections per day
Two-week incidence rate: 356 cases per 100,000 people
Vaccination rate: 50.8% of residents have been fully vaccinated
Immunity estimate as of Thursday: 72% of the county’s population has some level of immunity against COVID-19, according to the Medical University of South Carolina
ZIP code data since July 1
Bluffton ZIP code, 29910: 2,624 cases
Hilton Head Island ZIP code, 29926: 1,029 cases
Hilton Head ZIP code, 29928: 414 cases
Okatie ZIP code, 29909: 689 cases
Beaufort ZIP code, 29902: 1,261 cases
St. Helena Island ZIP code, 29920: 412 cases
