The spread of the Delta variant in the last few weeks makes South Carolina residents to get vaccinated while the number of cases and hospitalizations is increasing every single day

South Carolina – The vaccination trend across the country has been on the rise since the beginning of August and the same appear to happen in South Carolina.

Palmetto State is among the states considered to have low vaccination rates so far and the latest rising trend in vaccination is coming at the best possible time in an effort to fight the Delta variant and slower the spread of the virus.

According to the DHEC, 46.8% of the South Carolina residents are vaccinated so far, a percentage that is far from the percentage needed in order to achieve herd immunity.

However, the positive trend is welcome and health and state officials are looking this trend to continue in the future months.

DHEC data shows some amazing numbers. According to their data, 2,583 people got vaccinated just on July 11. For a comparison, the number of vaccinated people on August 20 was 16,000.

As of now, around 356,000 residents in the Tri-County area are fully vaccinated.

“It does show that there has been an increase in vaccine orders from our enrolled COVID-19 vaccine providers, as well as in vaccine administrations,” said Dr. Brannon Traxler, Director of Public Health for DHEC.

South Carolina health experts say there are multiple reasons why the vaccination rates increased lately. They add that the trend is expected to go up since the FDA approval of the Pfizer vaccine.

“We do anticipate that some of this continued increase that we have seen going forward could very liked be due to this FDA approval. And that those folks are now deciding to go ahead and get vaccinated because the Pfizer vaccine has full approval,” said Dr. Traxler.

The Medical University of South Carolina is also seeing more vaccinations.

“We have seen a bump in vaccines per day. We were probably averaging as low as 100 vaccines a day for a bit there in June and July. That’s gone up to 300 to 400 a day,” said Dr. Danielle Scheurer.

Despite the fact that it’s good to see the rising demand in vaccination. Scheurer believes the percentage of vaccinated people across the state is still not enough high.

“[It’s] still not to the degree we would like to see. We would love to have much larger volumes of vaccinations. We have the capacity to do it not only in manpower but also vaccine supply,” said Dr. Scheurer.

So far around 50,000 vaccines have expired in the state, according to DHEC.

Below is the breakdown of vaccine expiration dates in S.C., as of August 11:

• Pfizer: 7,200 expire on August 31
• 2,790 expire on September 30
• Moderna: None
• Johnson and Johnson: 1,700 by September 31

It’s important to note DHEC said this is the most accurate and complete data they can provide us for vaccine expirations.

However, there are several providers who have incomplete numbers reported in the system.