Our Guard's critical role in the pandemic

With their help, 40,000 of us have been vaccinated

Posted 1/2/21

You may not know this because they work quietly and without fan fare.

Our SC National Guard – many of them your neighbors in Lexington County – have been supplying covid-19 relief across the …

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Our Guard's critical role in the pandemic

With their help, 40,000 of us have been vaccinated

Posted

You may not know this because they work quietly and without fan fare.
Our SC National Guard – many of them your neighbors in Lexington County – have been supplying covid-19 relief across the state for 10 months. 
Right now almost 500 National Guard male and female soldiers are on duty across the state. 
Their roles included testing and helping front line health care givers at hospitals. 
Major Gen. Brad Owens said, “Our primary mission right now is the testing sites.
"We have troops throughout SC supporting DHEC and other medical providers and we’ve also got our swab teams that are actually taking the samples.”
The National Guard is assisting at 25 testing sites, working inside 5 prisons and providing over 20 medical personnel to help hospitals with staff shortages, Gen. Owens told WLTX-TV.
"We have a vaccine storage site where we receive the vaccine with Emergency Management Division personnel and also with SCDHEC.
"We repackage and ship to some of the smaller hospitals that don’t get direct shipment.”
Gen. Owens says they collaborate with EMD and DHEC to prepare for a surge after the holidays. 
With the Guard's help, almost 40,000 South Carolinians have been vaccinated.
South Carolina has received over 200,000 doses of the vaccine and remains in 'Phase 1A'.
3,234 new confirmed cases, 39 confirmed deaths and 8 probable deaths and 31.2% tested positive were reported New Year's Eve.
Dr. Brannon Traxler said the state will most likely remain in Phase 1A through February.
This will allow medical workers, emergency personnel and long-term care facilities to get vaccines.
"In early spring, the state will move on to Phase 1B, once 70% of South Carolinians in Phase 1A have been vaccinated," she said.
Phase 1B will allow those 75 and older and frontline essential workers like teachers to be vaccinated.
In Phase 2, vaccine is expected to be available to the general public by summer, Traxler said.
 

National Guard, DHEC, vaccine, covid

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