West Tennessee county continues concerning trend in COVID-19 cases

DYER COUNTY, Tenn. — One West Tennessee county continues seeing an alarming rise in COVID-19 cases.

Dyer County Mayor Chris Young, who says he got sick from COVID-19 himself and is now recovered, is urging residents to take this virus seriously.

“When you have friends and family that have died, it breaks your heart. I want to do as much as I possibly can to keep another family from suffering some of the deaths that I’ve seen in this county,” Dyer County Mayor Chris Young said.

According to the Tennessee Department of Health, over the last seven days, Dyer County’s average positive percentage rate was 21.1 percent.

Mayor Young said, in September, the county saw 466 cases.

In October, it sky rocketed to 855.

“We nearly doubled in October. If we do the same thing in November, and we very easily could, because each case sometimes relates into three or four cases,” Mayor Young said.

The increase in cases doesn’t stop there.

“Dyersburg’s hospital has seen an increase in patients in the last couple of weeks, and that seems to be a hot spot up there,” West Tennessee Healthcare’s chief compliance and communications officer, Amy Garner, said.

“We have at least 20 patients in the hospital there in Dyersburg, and our second highest county for patients here in Jackson is also Dyer County,” Garner added.

“Sometimes they go for seriousness of the case, and sometimes they go because there’s not room in our hospital for them. That is very alarming to me,” Mayor Young said.

Mayor Young said, recently, the pandemic hit the schools and the county court house the hardest.

He says the entire kindergarten at Fifth Consolidated School is in quarantine.

The registrar of deeds and the circuit court clerk offices at the county court house are closed, with employees in quarantine.

“Our circuit court clerk is actually in the hospital in Jackson as we speak,” Mayor Young said.

“We can save lives if we wear masks, social distance, and sanitize our hands,” Mayor Young added.

Dyer County has a mask mandate through the end of the year.

Mayor Young urges residents to take precautions to prevent COVID-19.