Gov. Bill Lee announced Monday that “the vast majority of businesses” in 89 of the state’s 95 counties will be allowed to reopen May 1, when his stay-at-home order order was set to expire.
The decision excludes some of the state’s most populous counties, including Davidson, Shelby, Hamilton, Knox, Madison and Sullivan counties.
Some nonessential businesses will be allowed to reopen as soon as April 27, Lee said, and state parks will begin reopening on Friday.
“While I am not extending the Safer at Home order past the end of April, we are working directly with our major metropolitan areas to ensure they are in a position to reopen as soon and safely as possible,” Lee said. “Social distancing works, and as we open up our economy it will be more important than ever that we keep social distancing as lives and livelihoods depend on it.”
Earlier Monday, Nashville Mayor John Cooper said Davidson County residents should expect the Safer at Home order there to extend beyond May 1, with a formal announcement expected Tuesday. Nashville saw a spike in new COVID-19 cases over the weekend.
“What this tells me is that this virus is still active in our community,” Metro Health Board Chair Alex Jahangir said.
But Lee cited the state’s weekend testing spree, in which more than 11,000 Tennesseans were tested for the virus, as part of ramped-up testing capacity that makes it easier to begin a “phased reopen” of the state economy. Not all of the test results were included in the latest case counts. (Another round of drive-through testing is planned at sites around the state next weekend.) He also pointed to the state’s relatively low day-over-day growth rates in announcing his decision to relax coronavirus-related precautions.
State Health Commissioner Lisa Piercey said Monday they saw the state’s lowest day-over-day percentage increase in new cases, continuing a trend of single-digit percentage growth that led her to believe it is “probably safe from a medical standpoint” to start relaxing precautions.
The World Health Organization recommends that governments hold back from lifting restrictions until they are able to "detect, test, isolate and treat every case and trace every contact,” among other recommendations.
The counties excluded from his order are the six counties in the state with their own health departments, Lee said, but they also correlate with some of the state’s most significant concentrations of COVID-19 cases.
“We’re working directly with our major metropolitan areas to make sure they are in a position to open as soon and as safely as possible,” Lee said.
The governor said he did not yet know which businesses would be allowed to reopen at which phase of the process.
