Another day, another record.
The TN Dept. of Health reported 31 new cases of coronavirus in Scott County on Monday, the highest number of new cases in a single day since the beginning of the pandemic — marking the sixth time in eight days that mark has been raised, beginning with 14 cases on Monday last week.
There have now been 85 new cases of coronavirus reported in Scott County in the past 72 hours. For perspective, Scott County didn’t record its 85th overall case of coronavirus until July 31 — nearly 20 weeks into the pandemic.
There have now been 574 people infected with coronavirus in Scott County. And while state health authorities reported seven recoveries on Monday — a relatively high number — the number of active cases ballooned to a new high of 155.
Twenty-three of the 31 new cases reported Monday were confirmed cases with positive lab tests. The remaining eight were probable cases. As Covid-19 cases have surged in the past week, the number of probable cases has also increased. While there has been no official explanation for that increase, people who test positive with antigen tests but have not had a confirmatory test are listed as probable cases.
Underscoring how much illness is present within the community, an average day now finds more than 100 Scott Countians being tested for coronavirus. On Monday, there were 176 test results reported, 16% of them positive.
So far, hospitalizations continue to lag behind the surge in new cases. There has been just one hospitalization reported in Scott County in the past two weeks. Historically, around 5% of Covid-19 cases have resulted in hospitalization.
Four of the 31 cases reported Monday involved school-aged children, between the ages of five and 18. There have now been 82 kids in that age category sickened since the beginning of the pandemic, including 71 since August 1 — about a week before the fall semester started and students returned to class for the first time since mid March.
The number of quarantines in local school systems continues to increase. There are currently multiple instances where entire classes — and even an entire grade of students — are quarantined due to contact tracing.
Statewide, there was a record number of new coronavirus cases reported Monday: 5,919. It marked just the second time there have been more than 5,000 new cases reported in a single day; the other time was on Saturday. The number of active cases surpassed 30,000 on Monday, with 1,543 of them hospitalized.
There have been 3,610 people in Tennessee who have died of coronavirus thus far.
