Feb. 7 COVID-19 UPDATE: 3,369 cases; 66 deaths; 14.5% positive test rate

COVID case numbers in the Charleston area dropped 43% over the past seven days to 128 cases per day per 100,000 people, MUSC said Friday. But the virus remains severe because while numbers are falling, they’re still relatively high.

While the current numbers are equivalent to what the area experienced during the virus peak in the summer of 2021, the decline is encouraging, said Michael Sweat, project leader for MUSC’s COVID-19 Epidemiology Intelligence Project.

“It is good news, and I think it’s going to continue,” he said in an MUSC report. “There’s a real chance that it’s going to go back to where it’s almost nothing, like it was last June. And that could be sustained for months.”

While the Omicron variant remains highly transmissible and a subvariant is becoming a dominant strain in other countries, the disease seems to be ebbing here.

“It gets very hard for the virus to move because it’s going to bump into a lot of people with immunity who have just been infected,” he said, emphasizing that the threat from COVID still isn’t over. “It has gotten into the animal population. Once that happens, it gets very established, and just like with the flu, we get variations of it over time.”

Latest statewide COVID-19 data

South Carolina health officials on Monday reported 3,369 total new cases of COVID-19, with 2,374 confirmed. They also reported 66 new deaths, 52 of which were confirmed.

With 19,306 tests reported Monday, 14.5% were positive. That’s a 19-point drop in the positivity rate from numbers released Feb. 2.