Counties that surround Nashville and Davidson County now have a higher number of COVID-19 cases than Davidson County does, according to a claim made by Metro Coronavirus Task Force Chair Alex Jahangir at a press conference Friday.
“We now have 2,832 confirmed cases. That’s an increase of 163 cases in the last 24 hours. There are an additional 3,227 cases in the surrounding counties. That’s an increase of 955 in one day. Now, for the first time, the surrounding counties have more cases than Davidson County,” Jahangir said at Friday’s press conference.
“The total for our region is over 6,000 [cases],” Jahangir said.
“Of the Davidson County cases, 1,339 are currently active, and 1,466 residents have recovered and have been cleared.”
COVID-19 claimed two additional lives in Nashville Thursday, an 85-year-old woman and an 87-year-old man. Both people had underlying medical conditions. The virus has now killed 27 people in Davidson County, Jahangir said.
“The 163 new cases in Davidson County is concerning, but we need to see more data over the next several days before drawing any conclusions,” Jahangir said.
“Today’s dashboard shows the transmission rate in the 14-day trend of new cases both continue to be yellow, or less than satisfactory, while the other four metrics are green or satisfactory, including our public health capacity, hospital bed capacity, and testing capacity.”
Jahangir said community assessment centers in Davidson County are open five days a week each Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. In addition, county officials are finalizing plans to have mobile testing teams respond to long-term care facilities in other places that may need testing, he added.
“So far we have tested 1,600 people this week at our centers, and nearly 7,000 people have been tested since we opened on March 31,” Jahangir said.
Jahangir said the county’s assessment hotline is open every day from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. at 615-862-7777 for people who think they have the virus or think they were exposed to it.
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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
[…] Friday a Metro Nashville Davidson County Coronavirus Task Force official said that surrounding counties had a higher number of COVID-19 cases than Davidson County itself had — […]
What is the point of this well paid bureaucrats comments? How much of the cases in the surrounding counties were exported from Davidson? I dare say that is a better metric to consider.