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Everything we know about Beaufort Co.’s omicron wave as infections surge to new record

Beaufort County residents now share a collective sense of whiplash after a week of record-shattering COVID-19 case trends, long testing lines and dreary news about the ultra contagious omicron variant.

To make matters worse, the demoralizing trajectory of the Lowcountry’s coronavirus outbreak was capped off Friday with another new case record: Beaufort County recorded 618 newly confirmed infections, according to the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control.

The previous single-day high was logged roughly a week ago.

The county on Friday also set a new record for its seven-day average of confirmed cases — 364 infections per day.

DHEC does not publicly break down county-level case data by vaccination status.

South Carolina, meanwhile, broke its statewide case record Friday, reporting more than 19,400 confirmed and probable infections.

As this unnerving week wraps up, here’s everything we know about the region’s wave of illness:

  • Cases records are repeatedly being broken, but local hospitals have not recorded a significant surge of COVID-19 inpatients. Beaufort Memorial Hospital, for example, was treating only 12 coronavirus inpatients as of Monday, with one of those people in the intensive care unit. At one point in mid-September, during the 2021 delta variant surge, the hospital had 60 admitted COVID-19 patients.

  • Omicron, though, is still stressing local health care systems, as emergency rooms and outpatient clinics are inundated by a deluge of people seeking COVID-19 tests and treatment. “We’ve seen — at times — two- or three-hour waits, just because the demand is so high,” said Russell Baxley, CEO of Beaufort Memorial Hospital, in a Jan. 4 interview.

  • The new variant seems to be extremely transmissible, but not as virulent as delta. Common symptoms include a sore throat, a runny nose and nasal congestion, said Dr. Faith Polkey, interim chief medical officer at Beaufort Jasper Hampton Comprehensive Health Services, in a Jan. 5 interview. Anecdotally, the pathogen now appears to stay “mostly in the upper respiratory tract. It doesn’t seem to affect the lungs as much,” Baxley said.

  • Everyday life is being disrupted in major ways as omicron cuts through the population. Workers are falling ill and isolating at home. Events are being canceled. And the Jasper County School District has opted to go remote until at least Jan. 20 because of classroom closures and staff shortages attributed to COVID-19. Other school districts across the Palmetto State, including Lexington-Richland 5, have also decided to temporarily move to online learning.

  • The state’s coronavirus testing capacity is being stretched to its limit. Some residents waited in their cars for almost three hours Monday to get tested at a DHEC-run site on Hilton Head Island. President Joe Biden has pledged to send 1 billion free rapid tests to people nationwide. Americans will be able to start ordering those tests via COVIDTests.gov on Jan. 19. The initial testing program will “allow four free tests to be requested per residential address,” according to the Biden administration. The tests will typically ship within seven to 12 days of being ordered. Many of the tests could arrive after the worst of the omicron surge has passed. At-home testing kits are virtually impossible to find on pharmacy shelves.

  • The political appetite for public mask mandates is long gone in Beaufort County. Elected officials have no plans to enact such measures. It’s also unlikely that Gov. Henry McMaster, a staunch opponent of government face-covering requirements, will declare a new state of emergency.

  • COVID-19 cases are likely being undercounted in the Lowcountry. Rapid at-home testing results are not being reported to DHEC. And Beaufort County’s positivity rate is now 35.4%, which indicates that many infections are not being flagged via testing.

  • The Beaufort County School District is sticking with in-person classes for now. The district saw a jump in COVID-19 activity after winter break, recording over 200 infections and 500 quarantines from Jan. 3 to Jan. 7. “If staff is out due to COVID, and that hampers our ability to operate safely, then we would have to shift to a remote style of learning, or if infection rates within the school reach too high of a level, then we would have to shift to remote learning,” Superintendent Frank Rodriguez said during a virtual discussion Wednesday with the Hilton Head Island-Bluffton Chamber of Commerce. Rodriguez added that BCSD’s goal is to not “shut down an entire system, but to focus specifically (on) wherever the issue is. So, if it’s at one particular school, then we would handle it within that particular school.”

  • Beaufort County’s vaccination rate has hardly budged in recent weeks. About 56.4% of residents have been fully inoculated with one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine or two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines.

  • While the county has not seen a surge of COVID-19 inpatients, coronavirus hospitalizations are rising statewide, with over 2,000 such cases as of Thursday. That’s a 37.6% increase from a week ago, according to DHEC. The United States, meanwhile, has more people hospitalized with COVID-19 now than ever before. That could spell trouble for South Carolina, given that the northeastern states that currently have some of the country’s highest hospitalization rates, such as New York and New Jersey, were hit by omicron earlier than the Palmetto State was.

  • There were 46 children hospitalized with COVID-19 in South Carolina as of Thursday, DHEC data show. That’s a new record high. The South Carolina Children’s Hospital Collaborative on Friday reported that most of the state’s pediatric patients were either unvaccinated or ineligible for the shots.

  • South Carolina health officials are encouraging residents to get vaccinated, get boosted and wear masks in public indoor settings.

  • Some health experts predict that the state’s omicron wave will peak in mid- to late January.

What we’re reading

For additional context on the Lowcountry’s coronavirus surge, it’s helpful to monitor scientific studies and national news about omicron.

Here’s what The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette’s COVID-19 reporter has recently been reading:

Caitlyn Creamer, an upper elementary assistant guide at Lowcountry Montessori School, closes her eyes on Thursday, March 11, 2021 as Dee Ann Sanders, an emergency room RN, administers Creamer’s first shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in the gymnasium at Battery Creek High School. “It was just a pinch,” Creamer said when asked if the needle hurt.

Countywide data

Here are the latest Beaufort County coronavirus numbers from DHEC:

New cases reported Friday: 618 confirmed, 74 probable

New cases reported Thursday: 255 confirmed, 87 probable

New cases reported Wednesday: 185 confirmed, 16 probable

New deaths reported from Wednesday to Friday: 1 confirmed, 2 probable

Seven-day average of new cases: 364 confirmed infections per day

Two-week case rate: 2,592 cases per 100,000 people

Vaccination rate: 56.4% of residents have been fully vaccinated

ZIP code data since Jan. 1

Bluffton ZIP code, 29910: 1,093

Hilton Head Island ZIP code, 29926: 430

Hilton Head Island ZIP code, 29928: 266

Okatie ZIP code, 29909: 362

Beaufort ZIP code, 29902: 531

West of Beaufort ZIP code, 29906: 768

St. Helena Island ZIP code, 29920: 275

The emergency entrance, as seen on March 23, 2020, to Coastal Carolina Hospital.
The emergency entrance, as seen on March 23, 2020, to Coastal Carolina Hospital.

Jasper County numbers

Jasper County logged 57 confirmed cases and 10 probable infections Friday. No new COVID-19 deaths were announced.

Data in this story are current as of Friday afternoon.