Tennessee ‘world’s worst’ for COVID transmission, says doctor

The state of Tennessee is one of the worst regions in the country for transmission of COVID, a Memphis infectious disease specialist has warned.

Dr Steve Threlkeld, who works at the city’s Baptist Hospital, said coronavirus cases would continue to rise if no changes are made, putting intense pressure on hospital services.

“Tennessee, as we speak, is the primary hotspot for transmission of the coronavirus worldwide,” he said, according to Fox News.

“We’re not just high. We’re number one in the world right now in Tennessee for coronavirus transmission. It’s not an exercise. We’re the worst in the world.”

The Tennessee Department of Health said the state’s total number of COVID cases was 484,285 on Wednesday, marking an increase of 11,410 cases per day. There were 5,668 deaths, an increase of 53 new deaths.

There are currently 2,874 hospitalizations, although there may be more due to a delay in reporting hospitalizations.

Tennessee ranked second for daily cases per 100,000 people over the past week, according to data from the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday. Oklahoma was in the first place.

However, other data ranks the state as the worst in the United States for COVID transmission. The COVID tracking project showed Tennessee was the worst state for daily cases for 1 million people earlier this week.

“It’s not so much that the foundation has cracked again, but we have a lot more load on that foundation chronically throughout this time and it won’t go away,” Threlkeld said.

“What worries us is what we would be facing next month with more hardships, more cases, more healthcare workers sick and unable to be here, all of these things could contribute.”

There are 57,599 confirmed cases of COVID in Shelby County, according to data from the city of Memphis, with a total of 756 deaths to date.

Threlkeld said he and his colleagues have seen patients around the clock and said healthcare services are increasingly in demand in the area.

“I can’t tell you how many people, it’s just all day and all night, I see people who are sick and some go to intensive care and they say, ‘Well I was fine but we had this party the other night and ten people came over to the house, and I didn’t feel right doing it, I think it was probably the wrong thing to do, ”he said . “And guess what – it wasn’t the right thing to do.”

He added that the crisis was “more severe” now than when the pandemic first hit.

“The danger is so much greater and the vaccine is so close to bringing relief to us that we really have to use common sense,” Threlkeld said. “If we can’t do that, we’re going to find ourselves in a very difficult, more difficult situation.”

The state received its first shipment of the COVID vaccine to use as an emergency reserve this week. The deployment of the Pfizer vaccine, the first to be approved by the FDA, is the largest vaccination campaign in US history.