Nashville, TN – Today, Wednesday, April 22nd, 2020, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee’s provided an update on Tennessee’s efforts regarding COVID-19 Coronavirus relief.
Governor Lee’s daily press conferences will resume next Monday through Thursday at 3:00pm CT and can be viewed here [1]. Governor Lee has also established a website specific to COVID-19 Coronavirus updates which can be found here [2].
[3]Tennessee Governor Bill Lee
Key Updates
Important Data Points:
Governor Lee highlighted key data points from the White House guidelines for Opening Up America Again, [4] which highlight three key data buckets: symptoms, cases, and hospital capacity.
- For the past three weeks, both flu-like symptoms and COVID-like symptoms have steadily declined within the vast majority of Tennessee’s hospitals (see attachment).
- For the last 19 days, Tennessee has seen a steady decline in the growth rate of new COVID-19 Coronavirus cases.
- To date, we have had 775 of our 7,842 COVID-19 Coronavirus positive patients hospitalized. Through these hospitalizations, we have kept a close watch on the capacity of our hospitals, and they continue to deliver on care without a change in normal operations.
Additional Data Points:
- Testing: Tennessee has been aggressive on testing and identifying new cases of COVID-19 Coronavirus thanks to private sector partners and the work of the Unified-Command Group.
- Tennessee ranks 12th in the nation for total tests and 15th in the nation for tests per 100,000 people.
- We continuously watch the average day over day increase in growth rate of COVID-19 Coronavirus and want to see a doubling rate of at least 11 days.
Additional data updates from the Tennessee Department of Health can be found here [5], and more information on White House guidelines for Opening Up America Again can be found here [6].
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Administration Actions
Support for Tennessee’s Long-Term Care Facilities
Tennessee’s COVID-19 Unified-Command Group has made great efforts to ensure vulnerable populations are protected, especially residents of our state’s long-term care facilities, such as nursing homes.
Today, Tennessee’s COVID-19 Unified-Command Group released new data on COVID-19 Coronavirus in the state’s long-term care facilities and outlined its action plan on how to prevent further cases and mitigate existing clusters within these facilities.
Additionally, the Tennessee Department of Health will begin reporting the number of confirmed cases and COVID-19-related fatalities in all long-term care facilities across the state.
More information on actions to ensure the safety of Tennessee’s long-term care facilities can be found here [7].
Current Department of Health Testing Results (as of 2 p.m. 4/21)
| Confirmed Cases | Hospitalizations | Fatalities | Recovered | Total Tests |
| 7,842 | 775 | 166 | 4,012 | 114,980 |
For more information on COVID-19 Coronavirus in Tennessee, please visit the Tennessee Department of Health’s website here [8].
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