The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued nationwide guidance on mask wearing as community COVID-19 spread levels increase, and included seven Tennessee counties in its assessment.
“COVID-19 Community Levels are a new tool to help communities decide what prevention steps to take based on the latest data,” according to the CDC. “Levels can be low, medium, or high and are determined by looking at hospital beds being used, hospital admissions, and the total number of new COVID-19 cases in an area.”
The top recommendation from the CDC for protection against the virus in high community spread level areas is to wear a mask. Other recommendations include staying up to date with COVID-19 vaccines, which the CDC recommends no matter the level of community spread, and says that “[a]dditional precautions may be needed for people at high risk for severe illness.”
Overall, the CDC now lists 24 counties in Tennessee as having high community spread levels.
Davidson County is the most densely populated county on the list of high community spread areas, as the BA.5 variant of the virus becomes dominant across the world.
However, rural counties in Tennessee are not immune to high community spread.
In fact, a cluster of counties in the western part of the state are being advised to mask up based on community spread level. Those counties include Carroll, Madison, Gibson, Henderson and several others in the surrounding area.
Shelby County, home to densely-populated Memphis, only has a medium community spread risk.
Controversial COVID-19 czar Dr. Anthony Fauci says the pandemic is alive and well, though he insinuated that the current variant, while more transmissible than others, is not as deadly.
“Even though we’re dealing with BA.5, we’re down to 300 deaths per day. That’s not acceptable. I’m not saying that’s good,” he said in a recent interview. “We should get much, much lower than that. But we’re not at 3,000 deaths per day.”
“The one thing we have to be careful of is that BA.5 is more transmissible than prior variants and it has a transmission advantage. If you look at the latest statistics, cases and hospitalizations are going up. It’s still something we need to be careful and pay attention to.”
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Pete D’Abrosca is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected].
