HURON — For weeks, the South Dakota Department of Health (DOH) has been warning that COVID-19 variants would begin to be the dominant new positive cases seen in the state. In the last week, those warnings have come more to fruition.
When the emergence of the Brazil (P.1) variant was announced two weeks ago by DOH, the state had reported 77 cases among five recorded variants that had appeared in S.D. Those numbers had risen just slightly over a week after that initial announcement, though all along DOH officials warned that variant numbers were likely conservative as multiple laboratories that reported to DOH were not yet testing samples for presence of variance, only testing for positive or negative COVID presence.
In the last week more than 30 new positive variant cases have been recorded in the state. In total, among the five reported variants, 115 total variant cases have been noted by DOH, with the UK (B.1.1.7) the most prominent, with 97 recorded cases.
Variants have been reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to be more easily transmissible among persons and to more easily infect those who are young and otherwise healthy than the original COVID-19 virus.
State epidemiologist Dr. Josh Clayton emphasized the importance of vaccinations across the state. That state did move over 55% of the state with at least one dose of the vaccine this week and more than 48% of the state with the vaccine series completed. More than 600,000 doses of vaccine have now been administered in the state to more than 330,000 South Dakota residents.
In Beadle County, those numbers are 12,682 doses administered to 6,951 persons. That puts the county at nearly 38% of the county with at least one dose. Those who have received one dose have mostly completed the vaccination series, however, as more than 33% of the county has completed the vaccine series.
Between Wednesday and Thursday, DOH reports noted 183 new positive cases in the state along with 315 new recovered cases and four new COVID-related deaths. The active cases in the state declined to 1,309.
Beadle added five new positive cases over the two days along with seven new recovered cases in the DOH numbers to bring the county’s active cases down to 28.
Kingsbury County reported a COVID-related death on Wednesday, the county’s 18th overall and fourth in 10 days.
The Heartland Region dropped in active cases slightly over the two-day period, with 57 active virus cases among the seven counties in the region.
