Another tough weekend with COVID-19 as the U.S. surpasses 11 million confirmed cases and nears 250,000 deaths. The state added more than 10,000 new cases over the weekend and unfortunately broke a record with today's report ... adding nearly 8,000 new cases in 24 hours. Nashville also hit a milestone by passing the 40,000 mark of confirmed cases today.

Both local and state health officials are concerned about seeing increasing hospitalizations and deaths, which typically lag behind increased case counts, in the coming weeks. Public health officials across the country are particularly concerned about Thanksgiving as a super spreader event at a time when many hospitals are already facing staffing and space shortages.

Amid the bad news, another ray of hope as Moderna released initial results from their vaccine clinical trials, showing a greater than 90% efficacy like Pfizer. To have two vaccine options ready in the coming weeks with high rates of protection is exciting, although public health officials stress it's important for people not to let their guard down or succumb to 'COVID fatigue' as wearing masks, washing hands, limiting indoor gatherings and maintaining social distance will continue to be critical to stopping the spread for the foreseeable future.

Metro Nashville

As of 9:30 today, the city reported 40,433 confirmed cases, an increase of 590 since yesterday. There are currently 3,661 active cases in Nashville (an increase of 566 over the weekend), 36,427 inactive or recovered cases (up 754 since Friday) and 312 active hospitalizations (an increase of 18 over the weekend). With 345 deaths (12 since Friday), the city has a case fatality rate of 0.85%. In Davidson County, 590,780 tests have been administered with a positive rate of 8.4%.

Out of 8 metrics on the trend lines, Nashville has 3 in the green, 2 in the yellow and 3 in the red - transmission rate, 14-day new case trend and new cases per 100,000 residents. With a goal for transmission to be less than 1.0, the city's current transmission rate is 1.17 (up from 1.15 on Friday). The 14-day case trend is in the red with new cases rising. 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 18% availability (up from 12% on Friday), and ICU beds have returned to yellow after being in the red as availability has risen to at 14% capacity (up from 5% on Friday). The goal for both hospital and ICU bed capacity is 20%.

The New Cases per 100K Residents has remained in the red for more than two weeks. The goal of the seven-day rolling average is to be at 10 or below. Currently, Nashville sits at 54.6 as of 9:30 am this morning (up from 49.6 on Friday morning). 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 8.5% (up just slightly from 8.4% on Friday).

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

Nashville remains in Phase 3 of COVID Reopening. The city also continues its mask mandate, with several nearby counties having reinstated similar mandates after letting them expire earlier. Governor Bill Lee extended the Tennessee State of Emergency tied to COVID-19 through Dec. 29.

Tennessee State

As of this afternoon, the Tennessee Department of Health (TDH) confirmed an additional 7,951 new cases of COVID-19 with the state total hitting 318,888. Today, there are 1,810 hospitalizations (up 23 since yesterday) and 3,923 deaths (up 30 in 24 hours) for a death rate of 1.23. A little more than 4.1 million tests have been administered statewide (up 60,862 since yesterday) with a 13.06% positive rate for the day. The number of inactive/recovered cases statewide is 271,864.