Thursday’s South Carolina COVID report

Today, the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) announced 264 new confirmed cases and  24 additional confirmed deaths from COVID-19.   For a second straight day, Oconee County reported no new cases.  However, there was an additional documented death of an Oconee County resident who died on Tuesday.

This brings the total number of confirmed cases to 124,397, probable cases to 2,195, confirmed deaths to 2,823, and 152 probable deaths.

On Sep. 8, the University of South Carolina (USC) reported more than 1,000 negative and positive test results to DHEC. On Sep. 9, DHEC uploaded these test results into its database and the results have been included in the state’s daily totals from Aug. 22 through Sep. 8, according to the date of the reported tests. The majority of these results were from saliva tests. Since it first began regularly testing students and staff in mid-August, USC has had technical issues electronically reporting test results to DHEC within the required 24-hour time frame, per the South Carolina List of Reportable Conditions. To improve the efficiency of reporting, DHEC provided USC with an alternate way to quickly report results and USC has assured DHEC the new method will allow the university to report positive and negative results to the agency within 24 hours going forward.

Testing at colleges and universities will likely contribute to an increase in certain counties of the state. As with standard disease surveillance reporting, cases are reported based on an individual’s state and county of current residence. College students residing in South Carolina to go to school would be included in South Carolina’s numbers, based on their current address.

The total number of individual test results reported to DHEC yesterday statewide was 4,417 (not including antibody tests) and the percent positive was 6.0%.