PIERRE, S.D. – South Dakota has realized an uptick in the number of people hospitalized due to COVID-19 this week. Over the past two days, hospitalizations have increased by 17 to 113 today.
State health officials reported 225 new cases Wednesday, with 59 of them listed as probable.
Active cases were down by 48 to 2,391 and one new death was reported. The new death reported is a woman in the 70 -79 age range from Turner County. The new death sends the death toll to 1,948.
South Dakota Epidemiologist Dr. Joshua Clayton says the state is seeing increase in cases and the average number of new cases per day over the past week has been 224.
Dr. Clayton says the COVID-19 variants continue to increase as well with at least one case of variant virus in every age group. Health officials say since April 1, 424 new cases of COVID-19 were reported in people ages 20-29, and only 17 new cases in the 80+ age range.
There was also an increase in cases across the Black Hills area Wednesday.
Pennington County had 17 confirmed cases and 3 probable. Meade County added 8, 4 confirmed and 4 probable. Lawrence County added 2 total cases with one confirmed and the other probable.
Elsewhere across the Black Hills area, Fall River County reported 3 new cases and there was one each in Butte, Custer and Oglala Lakota.
