Nashville Health Director Calls For More Residents To Get Tested After Drop In Traffic

The Metro Health Department is asking more residents to get tested if they have symptoms or feel they’ve been exposed to the coronavirus.

The city has seen a decrease in active cases in the past month, but it comes as Nashville is also experiencing a steep decrease in traffic at testing sites.

There’s been a 31% drop in testing since August 1, and the end of last month was already down by half from early July. Health officials say 10,900 residents of Davidson County were tested for COVID-19 last week, with half of those tests conducted at city-run drive-thru assessment centers.

“We have capacity to do a lot more tests than we’re doing right now,” said Metro Health Director Dr. Michael Caldwell during a Tuesday press conference. “I think part of this is that people just not taking advantage of the tests that are available, or they may feel that they don’t need to get tested.”

Caldwell says about 15 to 20% of the positive individuals are asymptomatic. There are currently 2,928 actives cases of the coronavirus in Davidson County.

The transmission rate, or average number of people who become infected by someone with COVID-19, is at .80 — the lowest since the start of the pandemic. This is despite an uptick in Nashville’s 7-day COVID-19 testing positivity rate, which is up to 13.2% from 11.5% last week. That means of those who are getting tested, a larger share is positive.

“We want to do more tests to get that number below 10%,” said Caldwell.