Covid cases are rising at an alarming rate.

The unvaccinated are being hit hardest by the Delta variant

Health officials worry that a Delta variant surge may overwhelm hospitals.

Lexington Medical Center officials say their ICU beds are nearly full.

Yet the state’s daily case count fell below 3,000 last Friday after hitting a 3,511 peak 2 days earlier, DHEC reported.

The Department of Health and Environmental Control Saturday reported 1,852 new confirmed cases and 615 probable cases, 8 confirmed deaths and 1 probable death.

SC health officials blame the highly contagious Delta variant for the majority of cases here.

DHEC gave no specific numbers for Lexington County.

The exact Delta case numbers are unclear as only a fraction of confirmed cases undergo genome sequencing, the process used to determine the variant.

Of 21,589 covid tests conducted Friday, 12.3% came back positive, down 4% from last Wednesday, the last day the numbers were updated.

This indicates a high risk of transmission, according to the CDC.

More than 525,000 state covid cases have been confirmed since the start of the pandemic and more than 643,000 cases in all.

Dr. Leah Clanton at Lexington Medical Center told WLTX News19 that, “We’re seeing really sick patients, we’re seeing young patients, that seem otherwise heathy, come in and they are super sick and are not getting better quickly.”

“It’s pretty terrifying the way our numbers have exponentially multiplied over these couple of weeks, it seems we’re doubling our numbers every week.”

She believes that “If we continue at this pace, we may even exceed the peak about a year ago.”

Dr. Clanton said, “Our ICU is busting at the seams and we have few beds available, because of the severity of cases we have.”

DHEC data shows 729 South Carolinians were in hospitals with covid-19 the week starting Aug. 2.

196 of those ended up in ICUs. 87 of those are now on ventilators.