COVID-19 puts a chill on Carolina beaches
As occupancy rates begin to rise, infections double
MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. – The elevator doors opened and inside were 10 people crammed into a space no bigger than a closet, none of them wearing a mask.
In bathing suits, they walked out of the hotel, across the pool deck and into the sand in what is fast becoming South Carolina’s hot spot for COVID-19 – Myrtle Beach. People in this resort city are leaving their cares – and sometimes their face coverings – at home after months of worry as hotels, restaurants and beaches reopen.
Mark Johnson said he doesn’t like wearing a mask when he’s at work delivering doughnuts to grocery stores around Charlotte, North Carolina. “Just wash your hands and use common sense,” Johnson said as he sat on a chair in the sand, a can of beer in his cup holder.
The coronavirus has not taken a vacation. When hotels were allowed to start taking reservations again on May 15, there had been 283 COVID-19 cases in Horry County, which includes Myrtle Beach. By Monday that number had climbed to more than 2,000, and infections had doubled in nine days.
And those numbers include only people who live in the county. The figures do not count anyone who tests positive after taking COVID-19 home along with a souvenir hermit crab or an airbrushed T-shirt. Business leaders estimate 20 million people visit the area each year, 60 times Horry County’s population of about 330,000.
It was unclear how many visitors could be expected in 2020. In April, just 3% of hotel rooms, condominiums and campsites in Horry County were rented, according to research from Coastal Carolina University. By mid-june, occupancy rates rebounded to 74%, only slightly less than the typical 81% at this point in the summer, the college reported.
Health officials in at least five West Virginia counties determined through contact tracing that trips to Myrtle Beach likely led to infections. They recommend finding safer destinations or self-quarantining for two weeks after a trip.
“Please be careful. And please think real hard about getting tested when you get home,” West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice
told people who visited Myrtle Beach. “If you would opt to go to one of our state parks or do something in this great place in West Virginia, we’d rather you do that.”
Christy Kasler is from another state that produces many Myrtle Beach visitors – Ohio. As she sat in a chair and watched her daughter-in-law play with her 11-month-old grandson on his first trip to the beach, she said the recommendation to self-quarantine when she returns to her Nelsonville home was asking too much.
“If I get it, I could have just as easily got it back home,” Kasler said. “You can’t live your life in fear.”
Horry County isn’t South Carolina’s only hot spot.
Health officials are tracking virus clusters in the Latino community around Greenville, restaurants workers in Charleston, rural churches that returned to services and large family gatherings.
When Gov. Henry Mcmaster effectively closed the state at the start of April, the rate of new cases flattened out.
It started climbing again after reopening began in early May, and the rate keeps rising. South Carolina now has the fourth-highest new infection rate in the nation when adjusted for population, trailing just Arizona, Arkansas and Alabama.
The state sets records almost daily for the number of new cases, the percentage of positive tests and the number of people in the hospital with COVID-19.