The rise in COVID-19 cases may not be mercurial, but the increase is steady, according to Kim Tedford, regional health director of the Jackson-Madison County Regional Health Department.
“Since our last briefing (Aug. 4), we’ve had more than 500 cases,” Tedford said, “One glimmer of good news – I went back and looked at first dose vaccines that we have given here at the health department since last Wednesday and we have given 790 first dose vaccines since we met for our briefing last week.”
Tedford said the numbers countywide are considerably higher.
Tedford said 55.2 percent of the population in Madison County has had at least one dose of the vaccine – 47.3 percent are fully vaccinated with either two doses of Pfizer or Moderna.
Data from July 13 through July 26 showed an average of 14 new cases per day, but Tedford said the numbers jumped to an average of 54 per day from July 27 to August 9.
“The last seven day average,” Tedford said, “We are averaging 65 new cases per day.”
Amy Garner, West Tennessee Healthcare system vice president chief compliance & communications officer, said there are 600 patients at Jackson-Madison County General Hospital.
“Those numbers are very high for this time of year even if we didn’t have COVID patients,” Garner said, “But unfortunately, our COVID numbers continue to climb as well.”
Garner said the hospital had 119 Covid patients Wednesday morning with 45 of those patients in an ICU bed, 30 of those patients on a ventilator and a total of 56 ventilators running.
Garner said the peak number in December 2020, had 63 ventilators running at the hospital.
“Yesterday it got up to 61,” Garner said, “What took us months to get to peak numbers … has only taken us weeks to (return). This particular (Delta) variant is a lot more contagious. We’re seeing a lot of younger patients, maybe that’s due to the fact that the younger population did not get the vaccination in the same rates as the older population, or those with other health conditions.”
(PHOTO: Amy Garner – West Tennessee Healthcare system vice president
chief compliance & communications officer)
