The TN Dept. of Health on Sunday reported only 2,841 new cases of coronavirus across Tennessee. While that number would have once seemed tremendous, it was the third-lowest number of daily new cases reported in the Volunteer State since Thanksgiving.
The Dept. of Health reported 2,430 new cases on Monday and 2,057 on Tuesday before reporting more than 4,000 new cases each of the next four days. Prior to Monday, the last time the Dept. of Health reported fewer than 3,000 cases in a single 24-hour period was Nov. 25, when 2,118 new cases were reported.
Prior to mid November, the Dept. of Health was routinely reporting fewer than 2,000 new cases per day — and even reported fewer than 800 new cases on Nov. 1. But since Nov. 25, the Dept. of Health had been reporting an average of more than 6,300 new cases per day and had reported in excess of 10,000 cases in a single day on several occasions.
The same trend is being manifested in Scott County, where the Dept. of Health reported only six new cases of Covid-19 on Sunday. The number of active cases of coronavirus in Scott County remains at 129 and has been nearly static for the past five days. But new cases are clearly in decline. The Dept. of Health has reported single-digit numbers of new cases three times in the past four days and five times in the past seven days. To find the last time that happened, you have to go all the way back to October, before the first significant surge of Covid-19 began in Scott County.
Five of the six new cases reported on Sunday were confirmed cases, meaning that the patient had a positive PCR test returned from a laboratory. That’s a break from recent trends; since January began, most of Scott County’s new cases have been classified as probable cases, either because the patient was tested with an antigen, or rapid, test, or for other reasons.
Testing positivity has been in decline in Scott County. Five of 32 test results reported by the Dept. of Health on Sunday were positive, 16% of the total. But for the past week, testing positivity has been slightly under 10%. At the worst of the covid surge, testing positivity was running greater than 30% in Scott County.
In all, there have been at least 2,303 Scott Countians sickened by covid. Of those, 2,142 have recovered. There have been 47 hospitalizations and 32 deaths linked to the virus within the local community.
In Knox County, active cases have dipped below 3,000 for the first time in several weeks.
Statewide, there were 45,523 active cases of covid as of Sunday, according to the Dept. of Health. That was the fewest active cases in Tennessee since Dec. 10. After that, active cases jumped as high as 85,000.
