April 28, 2020 - Despite rising numbers of cases both the State of Tennessee and Metro Nashville continue to push forward with plans to open. In 89 of the state's 95 counties, restaurants have already been allowed to reopen, with capacity restrictions and guidance on safety measures that should be taken ... but not mandated. Retailers look to reopen tomorrow. Governor Lee also announced elective surgeries can once again be performed beginning May 1.
In Davidson County, the stay-at-home order remains in place for all but essential errands. However, the city continues to look to an 'early May' start to reopening some businesses and non-essential services.
Both the state and city saw big jumps in confirmed cases over the weekend.
Metro Nashville
On Friday morning, Nashville reported 2,176 confirmed cases. This morning, the number had risen to 2,588 - a jump of 412 cases over four days, including 100 new cases confirmed over the last 24 hours. The number of deaths rose by two since the weekend with 24 deaths now attributed to COVID-19 in Davidson County. On the plus side, 1,251 Nashvillians have recovered from the virus. The rate of positives from testing continues to decline slightly. Early last week, the rate of positive tests sat at 10.6%. By Friday, that rate dropped to 10.4% and today sits at 10.3% (although the number of positives don't equal the number of confirmed cases ... out of 21,400 tests provided, there are 2,213 positives listed in the results section but 2,588 given as the number of confirmed cases for Nashville.)
Tomorrow - Wednesday, April 29 - several Metro Nashville Public Schools and Metro Community Centers will be distributing Second Harvest food boxes from 1-3 pm (or while supplies last). A list of participating sites is available here.
Last week, Mayor Cooper released his 'Roadmap for Reopening Nashville.' For a summary and access to the full plan, see https://www.nashvillemedicalnews.com/article/3127/mayor-cooper-outlines-roadmap-for-reopening
Tennessee State
On Tuesday, Tennessee officially surpassed 10,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases. The data released April 28 log 10,052 cases, an increase of 134 since yesterday. The state also reported 188 deaths (an increase of 4 in the last 24 hours), 881 hospitalizations (an increase of 54 since yesterday) and 4,921 recoveries (an additional 201). Additionally, the state has tested 161,926 Tennesseans, an increase of 7,526 since yesterday.
By gender, women represent 46.2% of the state's confirmed COVID-19 cases compared to men at 50.9%. Yet, women only make up 39.4% of deaths compared to men at 60.6%.
By race, currently 42.3% of those with COVID-19 are white, 20.5% black or African American, 6.4% multiracial or other, 2.2% Asian and 28.5% pending. However, deaths by race break out as follows: white (114 deaths) 60.6%, black or African American (57 deaths) 30.3%, Asian (5 deaths) 2.7%, multiracial or other (3 death) 1.6%, and pending (9 deaths) 4.8%.
Drive-through testing will be available again this coming weekend, May 2-3.