Health officials respond to rising COVID-19 cases
JACKSON, Tenn.– With the spread of the delta variant and cases of COVID-19 continuing to rise, health officials say they are becoming more concerned for residents across West Tennessee.
“We have had over 200 new cases of COVID-19, and today is looking horrible, I’ll just go ahead tell you. We’ve added over 50 new cases today,” said Jackson-Madison County Regional Health Department Director Kim Tedford.
Tedford says the number of COVID cases has been rising since July 7.
She says a new case of delta variant has been confirmed locally.
“Last Wednesday when I talked to y’all, we did not have clarification it was here, but on our last critical indicator report, there has been a specimen tested positive for delta variant in Jackson-Madison County,” said Tedford.
Tedford says the Jackson-Madison County Regional Health Department continues to vaccinate residents; however, she encourages more people to get vaccinated to prevent the spread of the variant.
West Tennessee Healthcare chief compliance and communications officer Amy Garner says they are still seeing a spike in COVID-positive hospitalizations, with only one of those patients being fully vaccinated.
“Here in Jackson at our larger hospital, we have 51 COVID-positive patients today. That’s up from five just a couple of weeks ago,” said Garner.
Garner says to help prevent the spread of the virus she is encouraging people to seek help at their local urgent care clinic first due to hospital becoming overloaded with patients daily.
She also says the environment for nurses and patients in the hospitals across West Tennessee are concerning due to the outbreak of positive patients.
“They’re scared. They’re nervous about what is about to happen. We don’t want to see a surge in patients, we don’t won’t to go back to what we were dealing with before when we had dedicated COVID units,” said Garner.
Both health officials say the number of COVID cases could continue to increase. Health leaders say they will continue to monitor COVID- related stats for residents to stay up to date.
