Daniel Prince
30 deaths reported since July; county has highest COVID hospitalization rate in the state
Last Thursday’s COVID report from DHEC featured four confirmed deaths, one of the highest totals seen in the county since the pandemic began. Since March 2020, there have been 106 confirmed and 6 probable deaths from COVID reported in the county, out of 4889 reported cases and 355 reported hospitalizations. 30 of those deaths have occurred since July, when the last spike in COVID cases began.
1717 cases have been reported in Union County in that span, a little more than 35% of the county’s total. In the last two weeks, there have been 37 confirmed cases, which keeps Union County with a high incidence rate for that time period, along with every other county in the Upstate. Union’s incidence rate is the 2nd highest in the Upstate, behind Abbeville, and 6th-highest in the state. Union County’s hospitalization rate due to COVID is the highest in the state, with 7.3% of all cases requiring hospitalization. Cherokee, Hampton, and Lee counties are the next highest, at 6.3%.
There has been a small increase in the number of cases reported statewide since Thanksgiving, though the levels are less than half of what we saw at this time last year, when the biggest COVID spike was beginning.
Tune in each day around 5:20 p.m. during the Union Pennzoil Kwik Lube Top 5 at 5 for that day’s DHEC COVID update.