Despite reports of the first case of the Delta variant of COVID-19 in South Dakota yesterday (July 1), the South Dakota Department of Health says it is going to start scaling back coronavirus updates on its website.

Friday (July 2) morning, the department issued a statement on its COVID Dashboard page:

NOTE: Starting July 5, 2021, the South Dakota COVID-19 Dashboard will be updated weekly on Wednesday by 12 Noon CT. It will include cases reported by 1 p.m. Tuesday each week.

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This is the second change the agency has made to the dashboard in the past three months. In April, the COVID updates went seven-day-a-week reports to only weekdays.

The daily dashboard updates had been in effect since early last year when the virus first arrived in the state.

According to the latest numbers released Friday morning, there were 19 new cases of COVID reported in South Dakota, bringing the number of active cases in the state to 167.

25 people are currently hospitalized.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, 109,261 coronavirus cases have been reported in South Dakota with 2,038 COVID-related deaths and 6,793 hospitalizations.

This week's case of the Delta variant of the virus comes from Edmunds County.

The variant was first discovered in India and has now become the dominant strain of COVID-19 in the United Kingdom. It has shown to be more transmissible and is leading to more severe illness while reducing the effectiveness of vaccines or treatments.

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