Confirmed cases of the coronavirus in Nashville jumped this morning at a rate much higher than usual. The Metro Public Health Department says 230 tests have come back positive in the past 24 hours — that’s after just 28 new cases were reported the day prior.
Officials have warned that the city could see a spike in cases as businesses begin to reopen. But in a press release, the mayor’s office attributed the increase in cases to a technological fluke.
According to the release, a testing lab was unable to electronically report results at some point over the weekend. So a portion of today’s new numbers are holdovers from the weekend backlog.
Davidson County has reported 4,390 confirmed cases of the coronavirus to date and 46 deaths. Three additional residents who tested positive for COVID-19 have died this week — an 83-year-old man, an 89-year-old woman and a 69-year-old woman. Officials says the male patient had underlying health conditions but don’t yet know if the females did.
Metro is tracking a handful of health metrics as it phases into reopening, which shows the city is mostly on track with its goals to prevent the spread of the virus.
The transmission rate is still holding below 1.0, which means each person who contracts the virus is spreading it to the fewer than one other person. Local hospitals also have more than enough beds available. But cases are still increasing, even as the 14-day rolling average has remained “flat or decreasing,” according to the health department.
On Air - 90.3 WPLN-FM