Record number of children in SC intensive care with COVID as fear of Labor Day peak looms

COLUMBIA, SC (WIS) – With the start of the college football season in South Carolina running concurrently with a day three vacation weekend amid an increase in COVID-19 cases, health experts fear things will get worse.

“We will have a further increase with the opening of universities. We will have a further increase with schools not having masks and creating a huge number of cases. And then we’ll have the Labor Day trip on top of that. So yes, there will be a further rise, ”said Dr Helmut Albrecht, chairman of the medical department of the medical group Prisma Health.

Medical experts are already concerned about the rate of new cases in South Carolina.

Palmetto State leads the county in new daily COVID-19 infections when population size is taken into account, according to The New York Times.

The state has eight children on ventilators with COVID-19 and 17 in total in intensive care, according to the SC Children’s Hospital Collective.

And according to a model from the University of Washington, South Carolina, is expected to lose about 2,000 more people to the virus by the end of the year.

Dr Albrecht said reports of a spike in cases in other states are unlikely to occur in South Carolina.

“It peaks at a much too high level and it doesn’t peak in the southeast and the deep south which just have a higher number of people who can be infected,” he said.

Albrecht explained that hospitals are starting to see older people sick with COVID-19 again, often infected by younger people.

“We’re going to go up, that’s how it works,” he said.

For those who are vaccinated and want to take advantage of the long weekend, he says it is difficult to completely eliminate the risk of contracting the virus. However, he said that if a vaccinated person wants to congregate indoors with other vaccinated people without a mask, the spread is small and can be even lower if people attending the event are generally cautious about one. potential exposure to COVID.

However, he said being in a crowded arena with people screaming and screaming was risky even for those vaccinated. Therefore, he suggests masking if someone is determined to go to a game this weekend.

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