COVID 19 Continued

Will go this weekend.

That's coming up in a few minutes.

>> brooke: south carolina reached another milestone in covid-19 cases.

We now stand at 50,548.

South carolina recorded more than 1700 new cases and 22 new deaths yesterday.

Charleston county in the top two for both new cases and deaths according to dhec more than 8,000 people were tested.

About 20% came back positive, about 8,000 hospital beds are in use throughout the state.

That's roughly 75% and around 1400 of those are being used by coronavirus patients.

>> leah: if you need to get testing there's another testing site and saturday.

It is located at trident technical college.

The site will stay open from ten to 3:00 p.m.

The event is free and open to the public.

It allows residents to be picked up as well as pickup supplies to help lessen the risk of poke sure.

>>> summerville town council passed emergency ordinance to extend the mask requirements.

The mask was originally set to end yesterday but now goes until august 13th.

>> brooke: in effort to fight growing covid numbers in the lowcountry leaders from musc launched new campaign yesterday called charleston's choice.

Musc officials also introduced a daily covid-19 warning alert system.

The scale goes from green all the way to red.

Officials say we are currently in code orange, meaning there are high levels of transmission.

Testing under stress and hospitals are seeing an increase of covid-19 patients.

>> this is to help our community understand where we are and maybe encourage people to make good choices.

So that's the first thing.

The second thing i think is to be able to have some consistency in terms of our community and where we are.

>> brooke: musc officials say 62% of all covid-19 cases diagnosed in the charleston area have come in the last two weeks.

>> leah: covid-19 having impact on government employees in charleston.

Charleston county officials say two paramedics