SC to end daily reporting of COVID-19 cases, deaths. What to know in Beaufort County
Say goodbye to South Carolina’s daily updates on the spread of COVID-19.
The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control announced Friday that beginning Tuesday, the state agency will only release weekly reports on coronavirus cases, hospitalizations, deaths and vaccinations in the Palmetto State.
Until now, DHEC has been publishing COVID-19 data every weekday.
A DHEC spokesperson confirmed Friday that the agency will still publish county-specific case and death data in its weekly reports, which will be released on Tuesdays.
Data on coronavirus variants and cases of MIS-C, or multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, also will be included in the weekly reports, according to DHEC.
“Tracking daily case numbers is less useful, especially with the rise of non-reportable at-home tests,” wrote Dr. Brannon Traxler, DHEC’s director of public health, in a statement.
The agency on Tuesday also is removing its web pages with state data on breakthrough infections due to an uptick in at-home testing “which has resulted in skewed case counts,” according to a news release.
DHEC is planning to focus more on tracking severe cases, such as those that result in hospitalizations.
The shift in data reporting is not unprecedented. Florida, for example, has only been reporting its coronavirus data once per week since June 2021.
Nevada health officials, meanwhile, announced Thursday that their state also would be scaling back its data reporting, moving from a daily to weekly model.
Many states are changing their approaches to battling COVID-19, acknowledging that the coronavirus is expected to become an endemic, circulating regularly from year to year like the flu.
DHEC’s announcement comes as new case counts continue to drop nationwide, including in South Carolina and Beaufort County, since the super-contagious omicron variant first cut through the population in January and became the nation’s dominant coronavirus strain.
Beaufort County, as of Friday, was averaging four newly confirmed coronavirus infections per day, according to DHEC. A month ago, that average was 95 cases per day.
This story was originally published March 11, 2022 at 1:52 PM.
