With COVID-19 cases beginning to trend upward in Tennessee’s Shelby County, health officials said they are not headed from phase two into phase three and are considering a move back into phase one.
With more businesses opening up in phase two and warmer weather, many people are out more and interacting with more people, which is the likely cause of the surge in cases, said Shelby County Health Department Director Alisa Haushalter, who noted health officials have noticed people began to use masks less often at the onset of the second phase, but that people have begun using them more after the uptick in cases.
Haushalter said health officials expected an initial increase, but numbers will have to stabilize or be on a downward trend to move into phase three. If the county’s cases continue to rise exponentially or the health care system becomes overwhelmed with people, she said the county runs the risk of moving back to phase one, but that is not the current plan.
“We want to be able to move forward, but we need to be able to do that in a safe manner,” Haushalter said. “So the focus now needs to be truly identifying clusters and being laser focused on addressing those clusters, looking at emerging trends in specific communities and targeting our messages to those communities and really finding out what the barriers are within those communities to prevent them from either wearing masks or social distancing and doing the things that are necessary.”
Shelby County mostly is watching the seven-day and 14-day trends in new cases to make future decisions, Haushalter said.
The county had 8,490 positive COVID-19 cases and 170 deaths, according to the Tennessee Department of Health. The state, as a whole, has had 37,235 total cases and 556 deaths.
