Health official talks COVID-19 recovery in weekly update

JACKSON, Tenn. — Local health officials gave an update on the COVID-19 pandemic.

“For the most part, people are recovering from this infection or this aversion a little bit faster than some of the variants in the past, thankfully,” said Dr. Stephen Threlkeld, with Baptist Memorial Hospital.

While health officials are seeing people recover from COVID-19, Threlkeld worries cases could go back up.

“Anything that causes people to congregate indoors without great ventilation, as you’re not going to have great ventilation indoors in the very cold weather. That’s going to be an impetus for increased viral transmission,” Threlkeld explained.

He says testing is something that should be improved, as well as wearing mask.

“What I think we need to work on is the fact that masking probably is more necessary at preventing disease simply because we have done other things poorly. We’ve done great things. We’ve talked about vaccines. They’re amazingly effective and they’re safe and they were brought into widespread use extremely quickly, but of course not everybody took it. What we’ve not done well in is testing, and I think that’s going to be holding us up significantly moving forward,” Threlkeld said.

Threlkeld says to continue using masks, especially in closed spaces.

“If I go to an indoor situation without great airflow, particularly if it’s crowded, I’d still wear a mask. And that may change three weeks from now when the community transmission is low enough,” Threlkeld said. “I still do, and yeah, I’d recommend that other people still do for now.”

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