The South Carolina health department predicts that weekly coronavirus cases will continue to decline in late April and early May, suggesting that the spread of the virus may have changed in Palmetto’s state, or at least that the disease curve appears be flattening out.
The Department of Health Control and Environment reported 1,059 new cases of coronavirus virus from April 12 to 18.
In the coming weeks, the agency’s total project cases will drop to 957 from April 19 to 25; 871 April 26 to May 2; and 747 from 3 to 9 May.
As far as the agency’s models can tell, the maximum number of daily deaths was probably observed almost two weeks ago, on April 9, when 16 people died of COVID-19 in South Carolina.
The peak “use of hospital resources” was reported on April 10, when 270 hospital beds were being used across the state by patients with coronavirus.
The agency predicts that a total of 261 people will die of the disease in the state in early August. To date, DHEC has reported 150 deaths.
Projections can change quickly. Just a week ago, DHEC models showed that more than 600 South Carolinaians were likely to die of coronavirus this spring and summer, and that the peak of the disease would be in late April and early May.
The new projections offer hope that the social distance measures observed by millions of people across the state have worked to contain the disease.
“After June 5, 2020, relaxing social detachment may be possible with containment strategies that include testing, contact tracking, isolation and limiting the size of the meeting,” says the agency’s website.
But Dr. Linda Bell, DHEC’s leading epidemiologist, warned earlier this week that mass meetings should be banned until coronavirus cases drop dramatically over a two-week period.
Michael Sweat, director of the Global Health Center at the Medical University of South Carolina, said the social detachment efforts clearly worked. But it is not yet known how lifting some of these restrictions will affect the spread of the disease.
“I’m not one of those people who think we should be confined forever,” said Sweat. “But you just need to think about the future – summer, autumn – we can end another big wave in the future.”
MUSC has carried out its own projections of the disease that appear to follow DHEC projections closely. But there are some flaws in the method. DHEC projections essentially group the entire state, when, in fact, Sweat explained, mini-epidemics of the disease are popping up in different places at different times.
What will happen in Charleston may not be the case in other parts of South Carolina, he said.
“I am optimistic that in the short and medium term things have calmed down,” he said. “We are still a bit of a wait and see for the next few weeks.”
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