More Good News - Monday's Blog with Dr. Williams

Good morning and Happy Monday!

I hope everyone had a great weekend. 

I had the opportunity to visit a friend on this weekend, and was reminded what a beautiful state we live in.  Even though my trip was quick, it gave me a short break for the continued bad news in the press. 

With regards to the Covid reporting, I have remained frustrated with what seems to be a very negative perspective.  However, after reviewing last week's data, I do see some more good news.  The percent positive number (of tests performed) is on a downward trend when tracked for the last 14 days, and is now a relatively flat line when observed over the last 28 days. 

The daily case number yesterday was the lowest since July 6th.  The graph that looks at the cases based on the day of onset of illness appears to show a downward trend as well.  The latest data indicates that nearly 80k cases have been reported in South Carolina.  However, there is the theory that for every positive test obtained that there are 9-10 more positive cases that have not sought testing.  So this means there could be at least 800,000 South Carolinians who have had Covid. 

But even this number does not take into account that testing was not being performed until March, and we suspect the virus was here earlier. 

Additionally, there are reports that as many as 40% of the negative tests that have been reported are false negatives. 

So in theory, this could mean that approximately 3 million South Carolinians have been infected (there have been approximately 600,000 negative tests), and we only have approximately 5 million people in the state. 

This could signal that we may be achieving a degree of herd immunity after all, and this could be great news for the possibility of returning to school. 

So stay tuned!