Over the weekend, more than 400 new coronavirus cases were reported in Davidson County on both Saturday and Sunday. Nashville has averaged that many cases a day for nearly a week.
Hospitalizations are also on a steady climb. They jumped by 87 on Saturday — one of the largest daily increases during the pandemic, second only to the 94 new hospitalizations reported last Tuesday. The 14-day rolling average for hospitalizations is at an all-time high of 58.
The increasing numbers are filling up hospitals across the state. ICU and total bed capacity has dropped below the important threshold of 20%.
Tennessee is now considered a coronavirus “hot spot” by national tracking from the Kaiser Family Foundation. But the state is still testing more people that almost any other state, with only Alaska, the District of Columbia and Louisiana posting higher testing rates, according to tracking by Johns Hopkins.
To date, nearly 1.2 million test results have been reported in Tennessee, led primarily by state and local health departments. But at the same time, the rate of tests coming back positive is also increasing, now at more than 9%.
The hope had been that as the rate of testing increased, the positivity rate would decline. Instead, the 14-day average is higher than it’s ever been.
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