Updated at 6:20 p.m. April 2.
PIERRE – The number of South Dakotans who have tested positive for COVID-19 has risen to 165 as of midday Thursday, up 36 from Wednesday’s data, according to the South Dakota Department of Health.
Brookings County cases remain at two positive tests, and both people have recovered.
Of those 165 cases, 17 people have been hospitalized at some point, two people have died, and 57 have recovered.
There have been 4,217 negative tests in South Dakota.
Minnehaha County is the county with the most positive tests, at 54 with 12 recovered. That number jumped from 40 on Wednesday. Beadle County has 21 positive tests with 13 recovered, and there are 17 cases in Lincoln County, with one recovered.
There is substantial community spread in Minnehaha, Lincoln, Beadle and Lawrence counties in South Dakota, and 13 other counties have minimal to moderate community spread.
For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. Older adults and people with existing health problems are among those particularly susceptible to more severe illness, including pneumonia.
Learn more at www.covid.sd.gov.
Claims surge
Unemployment claims once again surged in South Dakota last week as 6,645 people made new claims for unemployment benefits, the Department of Labor and Regulation announced on Thursday.
As the global coronavirus pandemic took its toll on the economy, the number of people seeking unemployment in the state multiplied by a factor of almost 35 in just two weeks.
The state’s call center for unemployment has been swamped with calls, adding more staff and phone lines to assist people in filing claims. The number of claims is from the week ending March 28.
Gov. tasks National Guard to expand hospitals
SIOUX FALLS (AP) – Gov. Kristi Noem on Thursday said she was activating the National Guard to set up temporary hospitals in Sioux Falls and Rapid City.
The temporary hospitals will add 100 beds in each of the state’s largest cities as hospitals prepare for a surge of COVID-19 patients. They will be used to separate people with the coronavirus from other people at the hospital, said Secretary of Health Kim Malsam-Rysdon. The National Guard is looking at sites where they could set up the hospitals, which would take several weeks to set up, according to Malsam-Rysdon. She did not give an estimated date for when they could be running.
The Republican governor said that utilizing the National Guard was part of her effort to prepare for months of increasing infections, which she doesn’t expect to peak until the end of June at the earliest.
Noem said she hopes that social distancing efforts blunts the onset of COVID-19 patients, allowing the state’s hospital system to work through manageable waves of infections rather than be swamped with a tsumani of people needing life-saving care. But the governor has resisted mandating business closures or issuing stay-at-home orders, a move she argues is necessary to sustain some semblance of life and economic activity over the months.
“Hang in there everybody, we will get through this together,” Noem said.
The governor called newly released unemployment figures “alarming.” 6,645 people made new claims for unemployment benefits last week in the state, but Noem said she hoped that allowing businesses to stay open would reduce layoffs.
Labor and Regulation Secretary Marcia Hultman said people have had to wait an hour-and-a-half to file unemployment claims with the state’s call center. She encouraged people to file online to reduce that surge.
