By Kelli Bultena
Since last week’s edition, COVID-19 cases in Lincoln County have gone up by 18, bringing positive cases to 343 as of Tuesday, June 30, and of those only 28 cases are active. There are 314 recovered cases in the county. Patients ever-hospitalized in the county is at 25. One death is listed in Lincoln County.
During one of the weekly South Dakota Department of Health (SD DOH) press briefings this past week, South Dakota Health Officials confirmed that South Dakota has reported it’s first case of Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C) associated with COVID-19.
SD DOH can not identify the county but did confirm the patient is in East River South Dakota, under age 18.
SD DOH explained MIS-C is when a patient in the process of recovery of COVID-19 has inflammation of more than 1 organ system of the body: including the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes, or gastrointestinal organs. Symptoms: fever, abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea, rash, feeling extra tired.
When asked about safety of 4th of July gatherings, and getting back to normal, Department of Health Communications Director, Derrick Haskins said they ask that people take COVID-19 serious.
During Monday’s press briefing Haskins said, “It is important as we see cases increasing in other jurisdictions [to note] that we are very close to that kind of transmission event happening in South Dakota. It really comes down to what kind of mixing people are doing, with the warmer weather and the 4th of July. A lot of what we are seeing from the increases is that general increase is in the younger population who are not at higher level of risk for severe disease but are attending events. We need strong messaging… that individuals should take proper precautions — wash hands, use a face mask if going out in public among crowds and take additional proper precautions.”
South Dakota health officials also said on Monday that the surge in cases the state had anticipated into late June was because they were looking at transmission occurring at the same time across the state.
Haskins explained, “The level of transmission is different for every community. We have been posting the information at the county level so that individuals and business in those counties can make decisions for their own individual precautions.”
The number of positive COVID-19 cases in the state of South Dakota are at 6764 as of June 30, of those, 801 are active cases. A total of 5872 patients have recovered from the virus. Deaths in South Dakota due to COVID-19 have risen to 91. Currently hospitalized in South Dakota for the virus are 70 patients.
Lincoln County is still defined as having substantial community spread.
As a country, according to John Hopkins University and Medicine, the United States has 2,688,246 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 128,104 deaths as a result of COVID-19 as of July 2, 2020.