SOUTH CAROLINA
South Carolina’s biggest cluster of coronavirus cases would have gone undetected under early federal testing guidelines if doctors had not insisted their patient be tested anyway.
The doctors’ demands yielded a startling result: The new coronavirus had reached Camden, a town of about 7,000 in the center of the state. It had infected people who hadn’t been traveling, at a moment when authorities were limiting the U.S.’s scarce tests to sick patients who’d been to areas where the virus was prevalent.
It had spread in South Carolina without detection.
The experience in Camden highlights the importance of testing for the coronavirus and COVID-19, the disease it causes. And it shows how early shortfalls in testing let it travel here unabated.
SC’s first coronavirus cluster highlights the importance of tests, but they’re hard to get