A Metro heat map released Oct. 20 showing Nashville's highest pockets of infection
Things were looking OK for a bit, but COVID-19 cases are spiking again in Nashville and across Tennessee. The state set a record for new cases in a 24-hour period on Monday, announcing 3,317 positive tests. This morning, Nashville announced 441 confirmed cases in the past 24 hours following Monday's announcement of 276 new cases.
As Kara Hartnett reported at our sister publication Nashville Post yesterday, more Tennesseans are currently hospitalized with COVID-19 than ever before. The state's death toll is approaching 3,000, while the city's is approaching 300.
More on the big picture from the Post:
Since reopening the majority of schools in the state by August, coronavirus infections among school-aged children have increased more than 50 percent, largely in rural counties, where in-person classes started sooner than Metro areas. While children rarely face illness from the virus, they often spread it to the rest of their families.As outbreaks slowed in Metro areas that carried the original surges, case counts began rising in rural counties. At the end of September, right before Gov. Bill Lee moved to repeal all remaining business and social restrictions in 89 counties across the state, rural counties had produced 61 percent more cases than and twice as many deaths as their urban counterparts.
Among the worst outbreaks at that time was Fentress County in the Upper Cumberland, which has a population of about 18,000. There, the average positivity rate had exceeded 30 percent and new infections were piling on at an average rate of 83 cases per 100,000. No mask mandate was imposed and county residents were largely “getting back to normal.”
“People are getting really frustrated and tired of having to do the public health things that we know work,” Melissa McPheeters, an epidemiologist and health policy research professor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center told the Post. “And so we’re experiencing the surge in places against the backdrop of that kind of fatigue, and it could make it accelerate even more if we’re not careful.”
Officials tracking the outbreaks note that transmission among students does not appear to be occurring in classrooms, but rather during extracurricular activities and social gatherings outside of school.
Gov. Bill Lee continues to oppose a statewide mask mandate, despite the White House urging him to implement one. The governor appears to be enjoying his time in quarantine after a member of his security detail tested positive.
