Free COVID-19 testing clinics scheduled in Beaufort Co. as infections soar. When, where?
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COVID-19 in the Lowcountry
Here’s the latest on the omicron variant surge, COVID-19 guidance and more in the Lowcountry.
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There’s some good news for Beaufort County residents who are frantically searching for COVID-19 tests amid the omicron surge.
A free, public testing site on Hilton Head Island will reopen Monday and is now scheduled to operate once a week until the end of February (excluding a few weeks when there’s a holiday on a Monday), said Tom Dunn, the town’s emergency manager.
The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control runs the north-end site, which is located at Fire Station 4, 400 Squire Pope Road.
Dunn confirmed this week that the DHEC site will continue to offer free polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, tests.
PCR tests are more sensitive than rapid antigen tests, but it also takes a longer amount of time for residents to get PCR test results back.
DHEC, as of early Friday, said the average turnaround time for PCR test results in South Carolina was two to three days, but in some cases the turnaround times were five to seven days.
The agency’s Hilton Head testing site will be open on Monday from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., Dunn said. A doctor’s referral and an appointment are not required.
The town on Friday also announced that it had partnered with BrightStar Care, a home health care provider, to host free PCR drive-thru testing at Chaplin Community Park, 11 Castnet Drive, from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays starting the week of Jan. 10.
Although it is not required, clinic organizers recommend that people pre-register for testing at the Chaplin site: bit.ly/ChaplinParkTesting
“Times and days may be adjusted over time based upon public response/need for tests,” town spokeswoman Carolyn Grant wrote in a text.
A spokeswoman for Beaufort Memorial Hospital, meanwhile, confirmed this week that the medical center may host free drive-thru testing clinics on a pop-up basis, when there’s a need.
The hospital had previously shuttered its free testing clinic in Beaufort due to a drop in demand.
That was just before omicron began to pummel South Carolina, leading to record-breaking case counts.
There’s recently been a surge of interest in coronavirus tests as the super contagious variant races through the population. Rapid at-home testing kits are flying off pharmacy shelves, and residents have reported long lines at testing sites.
Dr. Linda Bell, the state’s chief epidemiologist, told reporters Wednesday that DHEC is “exploring all options” to alleviate the testing wait times.
“With the numbers of cases that we’re seeing,” Bell said, “there’s just limitations in how to meet that demand. We are working to do that but ... I just again want to ask the community to help us out of the position that we’re in. We can reduce the demand for testing if we reduce activities that lead to (disease) spread.”
Bell added that DHEC is “privy to the same information” that the public currently has on President Joe Biden’s recent pledge to send 500 million free, at-home COVID-19 tests to people nationwide.
“We have not heard anything regarding the types or the brands of tests, nor how they will be ordered or shipped,” Bell said.
DHEC, meanwhile, in a Friday tweet wrote that it has ordered nearly 500,000 rapid tests “to distribute in our communities in the coming days and weeks that should help reduce wait and reporting times.”
Details on the state plan were not immediately available.
For context: There were 42,790 viral test results recorded on Wednesday alone in South Carolina. Roughly 12,500 of those, or about 29%, were positive for COVID-19.
(Beaufort County’s average percentage of daily positive tests in the past week, as of Wednesday, was 28.3%, according to DHEC. There were 1,040 viral test results recorded in the county Wednesday. Almost 360 of those, or about 34.3%, were positive.)
Dr. Faith Polkey, interim chief medical officer at Beaufort Jasper Hampton Comprehensive Health Services, in a Wednesday interview said that since last week, at least one in three patients coming in for coronavirus tests at BJHCHS locations has been positive for COVID-19.
“I’ve noticed that it’s been people who had gatherings, either over Christmas or New Year’s,” Polkey said, “and even if they were smaller, there would be just one person out of the gathering, it would be a grandkid that came to visit their grandparents, (that) ended up having a positive test. ... That’s been a lot of the pattern I’m seeing.”
Many patients, Polkey added, have a runny nose, a sore throat, a cough or nasal congestion (or a combination of those symptoms).
Omicron, Polkey said, seems to infect cells in the upper respiratory system more easily than those in the lungs.
It’s almost like “they have a little cold,” Polkey said of patients. “I think that’s the deceptive part, the scary part.”
Beaufort County’s seven-day average of newly confirmed cases, as of Friday, was 148 infections per day.
Two weeks ago, that average was 23 cases per day.
Where else can people get tested?
DHEC has an online map that shows COVID-19 testing sites in Beaufort and Jasper counties: bit.ly/SCTestingMap
Other than the site on Hilton Head, there are several free testing clinics that will be open across the Lowcountry in the coming days, according to the map. None requires doctor’s referrals or appointments.
The Bluffton Public Health Department will host a clinic Tuesday from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 4819 Bluffton Parkway.
The Beaufort County Health Department has scheduled three clinics at 601 Wilmington St. in Beaufort: one will be held Saturday from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; one will be held Monday from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; and another will be held Tuesday from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
The Jasper County Health Department is hosting a clinic Wednesday from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at 651 Grays Highway in Ridgeland.
This story was originally published January 8, 2022 at 7:00 AM.
