Mayor John Cooper and public health officials on Monday urged more Nashvillians to get COVID-19 vaccinations and boosters and warned, in the face of the latest COVID spike, about struggles staffing Metro agencies.
During a virtual press conference, Cooper was joined by Alex Jahangir, chair of Metro’s COVID-19 task force and director of Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s orthopedic trauma division; Gill Wright, director of Metro Public Health; and William Swann, Nashville Fire chief.
Cooper confirmed one Metro concern is being "able to staff Metro government. The 250 out of almost 10,000 employees at [Metro Nashville Public Schools] would appear to be manageable. There are also concerns: Metro Police has 58 out of 1,900 employees, NDOT has 10 out of 294 employees, so it’s a consideration to be staffed and successful going forward.”
Jahangir reported one in 33 residents as presently infected with some strain of the virus and said this makes up 22,776 active cases in Davidson County, which is averaging 1,970 new cases per day according to weekly reporting. The Delta surge reached about 8,400 active cases at its apex, he added, or less than half the current total. The county has seen 167,346 cases since the start of the pandemic, resulting in 1,368 deaths, and Jahangir stated that the figures are grossly under-reported. As of Monday, Nashville hospitals were treating 707 patients with COVID, about 23 percent of whom (165 people) are in the ICU. Three months ago, the peak hospitalization rate for any single day reached 457, and 36 percent of those (163 people) were in the ICU, so the percentage of hospitalized patients going into intensive care is dropping.
“To put this in perspective: At our worst days in Delta, the number of cases per 100,000 was 96, and now it’s at 284," Jahangir said. "And the seven-day positivity rate is at 36 percent; that means for every three tests that are conducted, one turns positive."
Cooper pointed out that 168,000 residents have received a vaccine booster and that 62.9 percent of Nashvillians are fully vaccinated, which is about 10 percentage points higher than the rate statewide and roughly equivalent to the national average. Cooper emphasized the importance of fully vaccinated Nashvillians seeking a booster shot also.
Swann focused on populations vulnerable to not only COVID but also winter weather as of late.
Metro’s Office of Emergency Management cooperated with Metro Social Services to open an emergency overflow shelter for unhoused residents to escape the cold during recent snowfall and sharp drops in temperature. Swann saluted the Salvation Army for receiving about 100 people who could not be admitted to the overflow shelter because the latter was at capacity based on the unevenness of the personnel-to-resident ratio. Metro's overflow shelter opened Sunday and Monday nights.
Swann said one consistency of COVID-19 countermeasures in Nashville has been management of testing and vaccination sites, which he attributed to Meharry Medical College. These sites have seen sharp increases in volume for both services since the holidays, partly due to the Omicron surge. Meharry will soon partner with Metro Public Health to collaborate on operating a pop-up site on Saturdays through the rest of the month at the 28th Avenue and Charlotte Avenue intersection.
"For 94 weeks — almost two years — Meharry has managed Metro’s COVID-19 testing and vaccination centers,” Swann said.
Wright explained that studies from multiple countries show a smaller proportion of people succumbing to the Omicron variant than to Delta and attribute this to a combination of previous immunity through infection and vaccination among large swaths of the world population as well as the fact that Omicron does not seem to impact the lower respiratory system to the degree that prior variants do.
“Even though [Omicron] may cause a smaller percentage of infected people to be hospitalized because of the virus, there are a lot more actively infected people than ever before,” Jahangir said, “and thus, a smaller percentage of a really large number is still a lot of people filling up our hospitals.”
This article originally ran via our sister publication, the Nashville Post.
