PIERRE — In its weekly press briefing Wednesday, the South Dakota Department of Health (DOH) announced that they will move into group 1D of the priority vaccinations this coming week, the largest group of the priority groups in the state by pure numbers.
In numbers, the state added 769 new positive cases over Wednesday and Thursday, along with 763 new recovered cases and 29 new deaths. The active cases in the state went down slightly, to 4,728.
Beadle County added nine new positive cases over the two-day period along with 10 new recovered cases. The active virus cases are at 79 in the county.
The Heartland Region did see active cases drop to 178 across the seven-county region, but Thursday’s DOH numbers reported a new death in Clark County, the county’s third of the pandemic and the region’s 101st.
As of Thursday, the state had administered 51,360 doses of vaccine statewide to 41,755 persons. That means that 9,605 people have now received the second dose of the vaccine across the state.
Beadle County currently reports that 661 people have received a vaccine dose, with 192 of those having completed the two-shot Pfizer series of vaccines.
The state will be finishing those who are designated phase 1C in the vaccine priority groups over the next two weeks. Phase 1D will begin this next week, which has the most people of any of the priority phases.
Phase 1D will begin with persons aged 80 and older, and that will eventually be lowered within the phase to age 65 and older. Also included in the first wave of phase 1D that will begin next Thursday is high risk patients, such as dialysis, post-transplant, and active cancer patients, and high-risk residents in congregate settings.
The remainder of phase 1D will continue after those initial priority groups within the phase. The rest of phase 1D includes persons with two or more underlying medical conditions, teachers and/or school/college staff, and funeral service workers.
Secretary Kim Malsam-Rysdon was excited in Wednesday’s press briefing to speculate that vaccination of priority groups could be completed before the end of April. Priority groups comprise nearly 65% of the state’s population, by estimate of figures provided on the DOH vaccine website portal.
“Given our strong partnerships with stakeholders, and the non-stop efforts of our healthcare systems, the Department of Health is proud to say that South Dakota remains among the top states in the country in vaccination efforts,” stated Secretary Malsam-Rysdon. “Shots in arms - that’s our goal.”
