It was not until July 26 — some 10 weeks after the coronavirus pandemic reached Tennessee — that Scott County recorded its 50th case of the virus.
But there have been more than 50 cases of the virus reported in Scott County just this weekend: 54 cases in the past two days, as the Covid-19 outbreak continues to accelerate.
There were 28 new cases reported on Sunday by the TN Dept. of Health. That’s the most recorded in Scott County in a single day — and the fifth time in the past seven days that dubious benchmark has been achieved. Fourteen new cases were reported on Monday, which was at that time the most new cases Scott County had seen in a single day. Sixteen new cases were reported Wednesday and 18 on Thursday, with 26 new cases reported Saturday.
In the past seven days, there have been 106 cases of Covid-19 diagnosed in Scott County. During that same time, the number of active cases has jumped from 84 to 131, as new cases far out-pace recoveries.
Eleven of the new cases reported Sunday were “probable” cases. The remaining 17 were confirmed by testing. Of the 131 new cases in the past week, nearly 30% — or three out of 10 — have been probable cases. While there has been no explanation offered for the rise in probable cases, that category includes people who have tested positive with antigen tests but have not had a confirmatory test.
One indication given by the data is that the surge of coronavirus cases in Scott County isn’t new, but additional cases are being detected due to increased testing. There were more than 600 people tested for the virus over the course of the past seven days, and 14% of those tests returned positive.
That’s a positivity rate that is considered alarming by the CDC, which says anything above 10% indicates undetected spread of the virus within a community. However, testing positivity two weeks ago topped out at 20% — when there were fewer cases of the virus being reported, but also far fewer tests being conducted.
There were no new hospitalizations reported locally by the Dept. of Health on Sunday. As cases of the virus have surged this week, there has been only one new hospitalization reported. A total of 23 Scott Countians have been hospitalized with the virus since the beginning of the pandemic.
Seven of the 28 new cases reported by the Dept. of Health on Sunday — or one in four — were in school-aged children, ages five to 18. It’s the most new cases in that age category in a single day thus far. There have now been 78 coronavirus cases in Scott County’s school-aged children since the beginning of the pandemic. All have been mild.
Statewide, there were more than 3,000 new cases of coronavirus reported Sunday. There are now 27,428 active cases of the virus in the state, of which 1,490 are hospitalized.
