'Very High Risk': Tennessee sees big increases in COVID cases, deaths, hospitalizations
11 Tennessee counties have been designated as having "very high risk" of COVID-19 infections due to case rates according to Covid Act Now, an independent nonprofit which has collected and published nationwide data since the pandemic started last year. PHOTO: July 9, 2021 White House report on COVID-19 in Tennessee
NASHVILLE, Tenn.--11 Tennessee counties have been designated as having "very high risk" of COVID-19 infections due to case rates according to Covid Act Now, an independent nonprofit which has collected and published nationwide data since the pandemic started last year.
According to the data, the state as a whole is considered to be at very high risk, a designation which is only supplanted by the nonprofit's "severe risk" designation. Based on the data, 11 counties have infection rates above 1.40. These counties in order of infection rate are: Franklin, Davidson, Shelby, Tipton, Gibson, Cumberland, Sumner, Hamilton, Lawrence, Henry, and Hawkins Counties.
Of these counties, only Davidson reports a more than 50% of the population receiving at least one dose of a vaccine with 51%. Hamilton and Shelby are the only other two counties of the 11 with vaccination percentage above 40%.
Just this week, the Nashville Metro Health Department reported COVID-19 cases have increased by 25% over the previous week's time. While totals are still much lower than previous peaks, the current 7 day average is 2.6% compared to the previous week's 1.7%.
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Health officials are concerned about the uptick as the new Delta variant continues to grow in Tennessee and the nation.
Another recent report by researchers at Georgetown University examining the most vulnerable cluster of cases in the nation also included parts of Tennessee. Researchers identified five clusters of counties which have lower vaccination coverage compared to the national average. These clusters are all located in the southeast, have low vaccination rates, and have populations less than 100,000.
The data points are important because researchers report "the more geographically clustered unvaccinated individuals are, the higher the chance that an unvaccinated individual will interact with another unvaccinated individual, and the higher the chance that a disease transmission event will occur. Low vaccination clusters, therefore, are locations where risk of transmission of COVID-19 remains high (in the absence of social distancing and masking)."
These reports are also supported by the White House COVID-19 Data Strategy and Execution Workgroup weekly reports. According to the report ending the week of July 9, new cases per 100,000 have increased by 191% compared to the previous week, new deaths are up 33%, and hospital admissions per 100 beds is up 19%. Just 42.8% of the total population in the state have received at least one dose of a vaccine. The state ranks 45th in the nation for percent of population which has been fully vaccinated.
A recent examination of deaths for the month of May by the Associated Press found “breakthrough” infections in fully vaccinated people accounted for fewer than 1,200 of more than 107,000 COVID-19 hospitalizations and only about 150 of the more than 18,000 COVID-19 deaths in May were in fully vaccinated people.
As for the large percentage increases cited in the White House report, the 0.4 per 100,000 death rate is slightly above the national average of 0.3 per 100,000. The rate of new cases (30 per 100,000) is just below the 34 per 100,000 national average but is also a big jump compared to what the state was reporting the previous week.
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