It's too soon to know if Labor Day will have an impact on COVID-19 cases in Tennessee, yet. However, we do know the city and state have seen upticks following Memorial Day and July 4th festivities. Mayor Cooper has said he is holding his breath to see if there are any repercussions from the holiday weekend. To try to help keep downtown patrons spread out, the city has received the okay to close Lower Broadway to traffic on the weekends so that those waiting to get into restaurants and clubs with limited seating capacities have more room to spill out into the road without fear of traffic. The goal is to provide more room for social distancing.
Metro Nashville
As of 9:30 today, the city reported 27,009 confirmed cases, an increase of 21 over the last 24 hours (and less than 225 over the week). There are currently 984 active cases in Nashville, 25,777 inactive or recovered cases, and 99 active hospitalizations. With 248 deaths, the city has a case fatality rate of 0.92%. In Davidson County, 315,697 tests have been administered with a positive rate of 8.6%. The 7-day average for positive tests is 6/4% as of today (up from 5.5% on Tuesday but much lower than peak rates in the summer).
On the trend lines, Nashville continues to have 5 out of 8 in the green with the remaining three in the yellow. With a goal for transmission to be less than 1.0, the city has a current transmission rate of 0.93, keeping the trend line in the green (but up from 0.74 at the beginning of the week). The 14-day case rate is also in the green with a decreasing trend in new cases. Public health and testing capacity remain in the green, as they have throughout.
As of 9:30 am this morning, hospital floor bed capacity remained in the yellow with 15% availability. ICU beds also remained in the yellow with 14% capacity. The goal for both hospital and ICU bed capacity is 20%.
The New Cases per 100K Residents remains in the yellow this week. The goal of the seven-day rolling average is to be at 10 or below. Currently, Nashville sits at 15.7 (up from 13.1 earlier this week after a downward trend for two weeks). The goal for the 7-Day Positivity Rate is to see a figure at 10% or less. Currently, Nashville remains in the green with a rate of 6.4% as of 9:30 this morning.
More detailed data is available on the Metro Dashboard. Click here for details.
Nashville moved to a less restrictive modified Phase 2 of the reopening plan on Sept. 1. Masks are required in Nashville, and a number of other surrounding counties also have mandatory mask regulations, although some of those are beginning to expire (looking at you Williamson County). Additionally, public health officials continue to ask (beg) residents to be vigilant in maintaining social distancing measures, as well as to go out as little as possible, wash hands frequently and stay home if ill. Metro police are authorized to issue civil citations to those who fail to comply with the mask mandate unless the individual has a specific exemption.
Tennessee State
As of this afternoon, the Tennessee Department of Health (TDH) said the state has 169,859 cases of COVID-19 (up 1,622 since yesterday and more than 4,000 for the week). There are currently 808 hospitalizations (down 50 from yesterday) and 2,025 deaths (up 37 in 24 hours) for a death rate of 1.19. More than 2.4 million tests have been administered statewide (up 27,211 since yesterday). The number of inactive/recovered cases is 152,674.