COVID-19 update: DHEC announced 1,346 new cases of COVID-19 and 45 deaths connected to the virus today. South Carolina has a total of 88,523 cases and 1,647 people have died since the start of the pandemic.

The percent of positive COVID-19 tests was 19.1 percent.

As of 4 p.m. July 31, via S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control:
Confirmed cases in S.C.: 88,523 (+1,346 new cases since Wednesday)
Positive tests in Charleston County (total): 11,332 (+87)
Negative tests in S.C.: 631,594
Deaths in S.C. from COVID-19: 1,647 (+45)

Monitoring Isaias. Hurricane Isaias may scrape past the Lowcountry on Monday, bringing 2-4 inches of rain. Experts believe that the storm, which has been disorganized and hard to forecast, will bring some impacts to Charleston, but it’s unclear how severe. Source: P&C

Census getting cut short. The Census Bureau is going to stop door-knocking a month early, ending efforts to reach those who hadn’t filled the 2020 census out on Sept. 30, not Oct. 31, as initially planned. Experts fear the new deadline will lead to a serious undercount of the number of people living in the country, particularly of vulnerable and minority populations, as about four in 10 households have not yet completed the census. Source: NPR

What we’re reading:
– Vanity Fair: How Jared Kushner’s Secret Testing Plan “Went Poof Into Thin Air”
– The Atlantic: There Are Other Options Besides Reopening Schools
– The Verge: Three people just got charged for Twitter’s huge hack, and a Florida teen is in jail
– The New Yorker: Trump Is the Election Crisis He Is Warning About
– The Atlantic: Facebook’s Looted-Artifact Problem

The rest from the City Paper:
– Middleton: It’s time we teach our kids what’s not in the textbooks
– Civil rights groups and Charleston police discuss racial justice amid increased policing of downtown
– Local Charleston creatives and business leaders present pro-mask videos in new campaign

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