COVID-19 Update

The Columbia County Department of Health has released its numbers for today. Since yesterday, there have been four new cases of COVID-19 and five more recoveries. Strangely, the number of active cases being reported by the CCDOH remains the same. The number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 has increased by one, but there have been no new deaths.

As of 12 p.m. on May 31, 2020:

• Columbia County has had 33 residents that have passed away from COVID-19.
• Columbia County has received confirmed positive test results for 389 community members.
• There are 126 active cases of COVID-19 in Columbia County.
• 231 of the 389 cases have recovered from COVID-19
• 17 of the positive cases are hospitalized, 1 of those hospitalized are in the ICU
• We're received a total of 4,508 PCR [diagnostic] test results and we've received 1,243 antibody results, of which 130 were positive.      

On the last day of May, we can compare where we have been in the past two months. The daily record of new cases of COVID-19 in Columbia County since the first case was reported on March 20 doesn't make for the same neat curve seen in the state as a whole, but it is still interesting to compare April and May. 

In April, not a day went by without Columbia County seeing at least two new cases. Toward the end of April, there were spikes--the first, 14 new cases in one day on April 28; the second, 30 new cases on April 30. Eventually, we learned those spikes were new cases discovered at Barnwell.

May started out with the similar high numbers--34 new cases on May 5 and 45 new cases on May 6. Again these spikes had to do with Barnwell, where, as of this past Friday, there have been 134 cases of COVID-19 among the nursing home residents. Also in May, there have been eight days when there have been no new cases reported at all. Unfortunately, that has never been the case for more than two consecutive days, and that happened only once. On the first day of May there were 5 new cases; on the last day of May there were 4.