Northeast Tennessee driving statewide increase in new infections, hospitalizations

Northeast Tennessee's recent rise in new coronavirus infections and hospitalizations is the primary driver of the statewide increase over the past few weeks, Tennessee Health Commissioner Dr. Lisa Piercey said in a media briefing on Monday, though she said the state hasn't identified any singular cause for the region's spike.Piercey said the Tennessee Department of Health has theorized that the increase could be related to colder weather causing more people to gather indoors, but that no trends or cause has been pinned to the uptick.Neither is it likely related to the omicron coronavirus variant discovered recently. She said it's interesting that the region is seeing the largest increase in cases in the state despite other areas having lower vaccination rates than Northeast Tennessee's 47.3%."We haven't really identified any trends, and again (we're) not particularly worried about it at this point, but we are watching that," Piercey said.From Nov. 21 to Dec. 5, the last two weeks for which statewide case data is available, Northeast Tennessee accounted for 15.1% of the state's 21,382 cases reported over that time span — despite the region making up about 7.5% of the state's population. The TDH's Critical Indicators Report released last week also shows the region reported the most new cases per 100,000 people in the previous seven days, with the Blountville-Sullivan County metro area reporting the highest rate at 280.4. The rest of Northeast Tennessee had a rate of 218.5, more than double that of Davidson County, which had the third-highest rate at 94.5.According to the TDH's most recent Hospital Utilization Report, dated Nov. 30, Northeast Tennessee had the second-most people hospitalized with COVID-19 in the state (behind the Middle Tennessee region), accounting for 19.6% of statewide COVID-19 hospitalizations. Ballad Health, which operates the region's hospitals and several in Southwest Virginia, has reported a significant increase in coronavirus hospitalizations in recent weeks, rising from 144 to 230 in the past three weeks — a 59.7% increase.Piercey said that, at this time, there is no need for the state to allocate additional resources to help combat the rise in cases and hospitalizations, because they remain below where they were in August and September. The commissioner said a second round of hospital staffing grants is on the way to help alleviate staffing shortages."At this time, we're cautiously optimistic that we're going to be able to go through this surge and handle it well, but it remains to be seen," Piercey said.Ballad's Chief Clinical Officer Dr. Amit Vashist told the Press last week that the system's predictive modeling shows hospitalizations could reach 300 in a few weeks, cautioning that "all these indicators are blinking red."{p class="tncms-inline-link"}Omicron variant looms large as region grapples with early stages of a potential third surge"I wish I had a magic wand or silver bullet for you, but unfortunately there's nothing new under the sun here," Piercey said. "The same things that worked two years ago, six months ago, six weeks ago are still the same things that work now."We do have more tools in our tool box, we have vaccines and now we have vaccines down to age 5, but those non-pharmaceutical interventions that I've already mentioned — distancing, masking, hand-washing, staying at home when you're sick — those are the things that still work." she said.