Covid-19 must be giving health experts headaches.

Cases are rising but deaths aren’t.

Epidemiologists have forecast a fall surge and dark influenza and covid-19 winter.

On Friday, health officials reported a 1,058 case surge in the state. 63 of them were in Lexington County.

On Saturday, they reported 1,720 new cases. That was the highest number in more than 13 weeks.

73 of them were in Lexington County.

Oddly, no Lexington County deaths were reported either day. Nor was a death reported Tuesday.

Only 2 Lexington County deaths have been reported in the last 10 days.

The case count continued to rise but not deaths, a welcome trend.

On Sunday, the state’s new cases took a nose dive to 839, still high but far below the 2 previous days.

On Monday SC cases fell even more to 601 but rose Tuesday to 1,395.

The upstate has been a hot bed of contagion.

Greenville County had more than 100 new cases a day in 9 of the last 10 days with 209 new cases Tuesday.

On Tuesday, confirmed cases to date were 177,515, probable cases 10,223, confirmed deaths 3,795 and 267 probable deaths.

DHEC reported 39,770 individual test results were received Tuesday. Of those, the percent tested positive as infected was 13.6%.

That means 34,367 people (86.4%) tested negative

As of Monday, 746 people in South Carolina were in hospitals with covid-19.

That’s 9% of all in-patients. 26% were in intensive care and 14% on ventilators.

Virus hits 61 schools

Students and staff at 61 Lexington County private and public schools have been infected with covid-19.

That’s 3 more schools this week than last.

The most alarming numbers of the DHEC site this week were 15 students at Lexington High, 16 at White Knoll, 15 students at River Bluff and 7 at Pelion High.

25 District 1 schools in Lexington, Gilbert and Pelion are affected, 1 more than last week,.

District 2 in Cayce, Springdale and West Columbia reported 12 schools affected, 3 more than last week.

District 3 in Batesburg-Leesville and District 4 in Gaston and Swansea each reported 4 schools, the same number as last week.

District 5 in Chapin and Irmo reported 16 schools, 3 more than last week.

3 county private schools also reported infections and are listed on the DHEC site.

In the state, 1,926 student cases were reported and 825 staff and faculty cases.