Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said he would not be closing the state’s bars moments after Dr. Deborah Birx advised him to do so.
Birx, the coordinator of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, advised Tennessee officials to close bars and implement other social distancing guidelines to help curb an uptick in coronavirus cases while at an event with Lee and other public health officials on Monday. Soon after Birx laid out her advice for the state, Lee, a Republican, said he had other plans.
“Beyond the regions that currently have restrictions, that’s not a plan for us now,” he said of closing bars. “I’ve said from the very beginning of this pandemic that there’s nothing off the table. I’ve also said that we are not going to close the economy back down, and we are not going to. But I appreciate their recommendations, and we take them seriously.”
Birx said that she believes Tennessee is at a vital inflection point for the coronavirus in which a steady increase in new COVID-19 cases could begin to skyrocket, as other states have witnessed.
“It is at this very moment where we could change the trajectory of the epidemic before it goes into full … of what we call logarithmic spread, as we’ve seen across the South,” she said.
Birx recommended that Tennessee mandate the use of face coverings and close all indoor bars. She noted that such methods were proven effective in Arizona and that the two changes could have “as big an impact on decreasing new cases as what we had from shelter-in-place.”
Lee said he would continue to allow local governments to make decisions about face coverings and other coronavirus regulations. The Nashville metro area has already implemented stronger coronavirus policies when it comes to bars, restaurants, and face coverings. Schools in Nashville have also already decided to remain closed and hold classes virtually this fall.
