COLOMBIA, SC (WIS) – South Carolina set a dismal record on Sunday, with 4,370 cases recorded in a single day. However, experts warn that this new record is not the peak.
The epidemiologist and president of the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina, Dr. Anthony Alberg, said the figures recently reported by the Department of Health and Environmental Control reflect the increase in cases of Thanksgiving and not Christmas. . He fears that the numbers will only increase from here during the winter.
“O The winter holiday season with Christmas activities and so on probably led to congregating environments and increased transmission of the coronavirus. If this is true, we will see a significant acceleration in the number of cases that will take us until mid-January, usually, it is two weeks before, in mid-February, to see the peak ”, explained Alberg.
Experts have long predicted a second long wave of infections, Alberg said. South Carolina is experiencing this increase in cases later than in some states because of the state’s warmer climate, which has allowed people to spend more time outdoors, where the virus is less likely to spread.
Alberg also expressed concern about the high positive percentage rate in South Carolina. In recent DHEC reports, the positive percentage was in the early 20s. Experts say the spread of the virus is at a safe or more controllable level when the positive percentage is less than four or five percent.
“You are also saying that, in general, there is a high level of transmission in the community, so it is very difficult to go places and there [are] many people and everyone is not infected, ”said Alberg of the positive percentage in South Carolina.
As cases continue to rise, Alberg offers people some hope that, with the vaccine becoming more widely available, there is now an end in sight for this pandemic. But he says that now is not the time to become complacent.
“We are in crises. This is the point of crisis. When we talk about peaks and significant activities, we are in the second wave and we need to work to overcome this, ”he said.
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