Nashville's tourism scene and response to COVID-19 was featured in Rolling Stone magazine yesterday ... and not in a good way ... in an article titled, "Welcome to Nashville Where We're Just Realizing There's a Pandemic."

While some of the info might be deemed a bit unfair, truth hurts. The article rehashes the massive party at Fashion House and lack of mask enforcement until the last few days. It also discusses the dichotomy between messaging for residents and tourists. To read the full piece, go to rollingstone.com.

Metro Nashville

As of 9:30 today, the city reported 23,305 confirmed cases, an increase of 114 over the last 24 hours. There are currently 2,928 active cases in Nashville, 20,169 individuals who have recovered and 170 active hospitalizations (up 4 since yesterday). With 208 deaths (an addition of 3 since yesterday), the city has a case fatality rate of 0.89%.

In Davidson County, 187,002 tests have been administered with a positive rate of 12.5% (up from 12.4% on Friday, 10.7% on July 1 and 9.4% on June 1). Of note, the 7-day average for positive tests is 13.2% as of today - up from 12.8% on yesterday.

On the trend lines, the transmission rate is in the green. With a goal for transmission to be less than 1.0, the city has dropped to 0.80. 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.

Hospital floor bed capacity remains in the yellow with 16% availability as of 9:30 am (down from 19% availability yesterday). ICU beds also remain in the yellow with 12% current capacity (down from 14% yesterday). The goal for both hospital and ICU bed capacity is 20%.

The New Cases per 100K Residents remains in the red. The goal of the seven-day rolling average is to be at 10 or below (at which point the State of Tennessee will allow visitors to skilled nursing facilities). As of 9:30 this morning, Nashville sits at 28.3 on this metric (up from 27.6 yesterday). The goal for the 7-Day Positivity Rate is to see a figure at 10% or less. Currently, Nashville is in the yellow with a rate of 13.2% (up from 12.8% yesterday).

More detailed data is available on the Metro Dashboard. Click here for details.

Masks are required in Nashville, and a number of other surrounding counties have also begun instituting mandatory mask regulations. 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

The state reports 124,915 confirmed cases of COVID-19, an increase of 1,001 since yesterday. There have been 5,464 hospitalized (an increase of 125 in 24 hours), 1,271 deaths (up 38 since yesterday) and 85,313 Tennesseans have recovered from the virus (2,143 more since yesterday). The state has conducted nearly 1.739 million tests, an increase of 12,785 in 24 hours. There appears to be a stabilization and slowing of new cases over the last few days, but it should be noted that testing, while still robust, has also slowed some. Also of note, a recent Vanderbilt observational analysis found steady or declining rates of coronavirus hospitalizaitons in areas with mask mandates, but a sharp increase in hospitalizations originating from areas without such mandates in place. The state's death rate has hovered right around 1% throughout most of the pandemic, which is signficantly lower than the national average of 3%.