SC reports more than 61,000 new COVID cases over 5-day period following delay

COLUMBIA, S.C. (WCSC) - Officials with the South Carolina Health and Environmental Control have released COVID data covering a 5-day period following a delay in reporting. According to the report, there was a total of 61,677 new COVID cases over that 5-day period.

The state’s Department of Health and Environmental Control reported a total of 22,419 new cases in Sunday’s data, which contained Friday’s test results.

DHEC did not report data on Monday or Tuesday because of concerns over the integrity of the data, according to a news release.

“DHEC’s data processing issue that caused a delay of data reports from Jan. 20-25 has largely been resolved and we are now able to provide most of that provisional backlogged data today in our afternoon data release,” state health officials said Wednesday afternoon. “The processing delay was due to an extraordinary volume of testing data funneling into a single software system.”

The agency reports data on a 48-hour delay, so Wednesday’s release included testing data collected between last Thursday through this past Monday.

The state reported a total of 48 deaths over the five days.

State health officials said they were not yet able to release percent positivity numbers, since they are still importing negative results into their system.

“We expect to begin reporting these numbers in the coming days,” DHEC officials said.

Since the pandemic began, DHEC has reported over 1.3 million cases of COVID-19. That figure includes 1,049,013 confirmed cases and 279,437 probable cases.

The state’s death toll stands at 15,155, a figure that includes 13,065 confirmed and 2,090 probable deaths.

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