Tennessee Hospital Association Chief Calls For More Mask Wearing

The head of the Tennessee Hospital Association says the current spike in COVID-19 is far worse than the previous wave to hit the state.

Wendy Long told reporters at Gov. Bill Lee’s weekly briefing on the pandemic that new records for hospitalizations are being set daily in Tennessee, a trend that she describes as “alarming.” She notes that patients now tend to be older than those who became ill earlier in the pandemic.

But she says there’s still an opportunity to turn the trend around.

“We know we can do it because we’ve done it before,” she says. “Earlier this year, when cases and hospitalizations started to escalate dramatically in late June and the month of July, we buckled down and we masked up.”

For his part, Lee says he intends to extend the executive order that allows local governments to require masks.