//SC doctor makes tearful plea as COVID-19 hospitalizations rise

SC doctor makes tearful plea as COVID-19 hospitalizations rise

Months of frontline pandemic work have been weighing on Dr. Janny Soriano. But with more and more people coming to her South Carolina hospital with COVID-19 in the last few weeks, the pressure feels heavier than before.

“A lot of us have not seen this amount of death in a long time,” said Soriano. “To have to tell people that we’ve done everything we know we can do, but the outcome is what it is, and to have the same type of conversations day in and day out, multiple times in a day, it wears on you.”

Both South and North Carolina have seen coronavirus-related hospitalizations increase in recent weeks, as health officials note a post-Thanksgiving surge is underway.

Patient counts in the Palmetto State have risen nearly 40% over the last two weeks, with 1,234 coronavirus patients reported Friday.