ORANGEBURG COUNTY, S.C. — In Orangeburg County, the Regional Medical Center is cutting back on the amount of visitors allowed in the facility due to a rise in COVID numbers. The facility is now only allowing one visitor per day for non-COVID patients.
“We keep track of COVID swabs every single day, whether it be through our ED or our express care or Santee locations or primary care locations, and what we were noticing is we were triggering up to about a 30 percent positive rate," said Vice President of Operations Sabrina Robinson.
Robinson says the facility is also enforcing this policy out of precaution for any asymptomatic visitors potentially bringing the virus into the hospital and infecting patients. She says this is the first spike the hospital has seen since around March or April.
The hospital has been operating under restricted visitor hours from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
“We were actually thinking that there wasn’t gonna be a spike a couple weeks ago and we were gonna increase visiting hours back to 8 o’clock. Right now, we’re not," she said.
Robinson says currently all elective surgeries will continue as scheduled. The hospital is monitoring COVID numbers in the region daily and plans for the visitors policy to return to normal when COVID numbers start to go back down.
“Trying to get back to normalcy with pre-COVID visitation is really our goal.”
No visitors are allowed for COVID patients. Visitors are allowed for ICU patients.
For up to date information about Regional Medical Center's visitor's policy, visit their website.
