COVID positivity rates are again on the rise, with rates above 12 percent in both Putnam and Cumberland Counties over the last week.
“The average per day over the last seven days is over seven hundred cases a day, and that continues to grow,” State Health Commissioner Dr. Lisa Piercey said Friday. “Now, to put that in perspective, that is about where we were in early May.”
In the last data reported, Putnam County reported 24 percent positivity Wednesday, 23 percent Tuesday. In the same time period, Cumberland County saw 27 percent of tests come back positive Wednesday, 23 percent Tuesday. Over the last seven days, the state reports the percentage of positive tests among those given stands at 12.7 percent in Putnam County, 18.1 in Cumberland.
Piercey said she believes statewide increases are predominantly a result of the delta variant.
“When you have that increase in cases, when you have that increase in positivity rate, you’re going to see a commensurate increase in hospitalizations and that’s certainly what we’ve seen here,” Piercey said. “We were under two hundred hospitalizations statewide and now we were we are well over five hundred statewide. So certainly going in the wrong direction for hospitalizations.”
Cumberland’s 18 percent positivity rate over the last seven days makes it one of ten counties statewide over 15 percent, according to Piercey. Cumberland County is averaging four new COVID cases per day over the last 14 days. However, 13 new cases were reported Wednesday.
Piercey said COVID has shifted to a pandemic of the unvaccinated.
“About 97 percent of all of our hospitalizations and ninety eight plus percent of all of our deaths are among the unvaccinated,” Piercey said.
So-called “breakthrough” cases are happening across Tennessee, Piercey said. These are residents who have been vaccinated, but are still coming down with COVID. Piercey said about 1,000 of these cases have been reported, resulting in 195 hospitalizations and 27 deaths.
Most other Upper Cumberland communities are seeing positivity rates are between five and seven percent, below the CDC’s noted level of concern. Dekalb, Overton, and White all reported five percent positivity over the last seven days. Warren County stood at 5.9 percent with Jackson County at six percent. Fentress County data showed three percent positivity.
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