One person died and 95 new cases of coronavirus were identified Friday in South Dakota. The person who died was a female in her 80s from Minnehaha County.
Twenty-four of the 44 people who have died from COVID-19 illnesses in South Dakota were over 80. Thirty-six of the 44 were over 60. That is one reason Gov. Kristi Noem and the Health Department have begun a mass testing program at nursing homes and assisted living facilities across South Dakota.Â
Once again, the number of positive tests followed the number of total tests completed. South Dakota completed 941 tests Thursday. The total percentage of positive tests is about 10 percent for the past week.
Three of the new cases were in Pennington County where 62 tests were completed Thursday. That increases the total number of cases in the county to 43 and 28 of those cases are still active. Meade County completed nine negative tests and Lawrence County completed seven negative tests. Fall River and Custer counties each completed three negative tests.
People are also reading…
State Epidemiologist Dr. Josh Clayton said that Pennington County cases doubling in a week isn't a surprise.
"We will see more cases as we open things up more," Clayton said. "People need to take appropriate precautions as they get out more."
Clayton said the Department of Health is able to keep up with ongoing investigations into new cases with contact tracing in the county.
More than half of the new cases (51) were from Minnehaha County where there have been 3,101 cases with 1,042 of those still active. Brown County is still seeing troubling growth in the number of cases. On Friday, 19 more cases were reported — bringing the total for Brown County to 173. There were 11 more employees at the DemKota beef plant that tested positive Thursday. Thirteen more people recovered. Of the 106 cases at DemKota, 58 have recovered.
There are now a total of 3,887 cases in the state with 1,269 still active. The number of active cases dropped 43 Friday as 137 people recovered. Six new patients were hospitalized with COVID-19 illnesses Thursday but 11 people were discharged, leaving 80 people still being treated in hospitals across the state. South Dakota has 2,400 hospital beds available.