PIERRE, S.D. (KELO.com) — Since the Covid 19 pandemic hit South Dakota health officials, state and city leaders have been busy following the numbers. Beadle county started early on leading the way with Covid cases statewide. Towards the end of the year, the positive numbers in Beadle county took off again. A member of the Beadle County Covid-19 Unified Taskforce and Huron Mayor Gary Harrington said following the Covid-19 numbers has always been a rough guideline.
“It’s a numbers game that’s what it is, we know we have active cases out there but we also know there are cases in the system they have not taken off yet that have supposedly recovered. All that means is that your not contagious anymore, you should still be very sick but after 21 days you’re taken off because you’re not contagious anymore.”, Harrington said.
On November 8th the positive case numbers in Beadle county hit 503 and continued to steadily climb towards 600. November 18 a peak in Beadle County of 613 was reached. With the rising numbers statewide tracking active and recovered cases became a daunting task for state officials. Huron officials following the numbers took notice.
Protocol for the South Dakota Department of Health was to remove cases from the case count after 21 days, but the department was slow to do so according to Harrington. This in turn showed a steady increase in Covid cases that drew concern.
The SD Department of Health initially followed set guidelines for placing numbers into the recovered ranks. Those include checking after 10 days of the positive test for symptoms to be clear of transmitting the virus. The second process is if symptoms remain after 10 days or no contact, they would try again just before 21 days for condition, and if unable to contact the case would be moved to recovered. The third option would come from the medical provider advising the patient is clear of symptoms and at 21 days the number would transfer to recovered. The state process was in place but Harrington said the information did not match with what they had followed.
The issue affected statewide county listed numbers and not just Beadle County. Harrington said since then they are glad to have clear the errors, and the problem has since been fixed.
(Mike Rud with Performance Radio News contributed to this report.)
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