COVID-19 cases pass 4,000 in Tennessee

Note This story was last updated at 2:05 p.m

The number of COVID-19 cases in Tennessee passed 4,000 on Tuesday.

The Tennessee Department of Health reported 4,138 cases on Tuesday afternoon, with 72 deaths and 408 hospitalizations.

The number of cases in Anderson County increased by one to 11, after being at 10 for seven days. There have been no deaths in Anderson County due to COVID-19.

Knox County, which includes Knoxville, had 143 cases and three deaths, according to the state totals on Tuesday afternoon.

COVID-19 is a contagious respiratory illness that can be deadly.

The Tennessee Department of Health reported that 466 patients have recovered from COVID-19 in Tennessee. The Tennessee Department of Health publishes the state case totals at 2 p.m. Central time each day.

There have been 52,874 COVID-19 tests in Tennessee at the state public health laboratory and at other labs. The total number of cases in Tennessee includes both confirmed cases and cases that are presumed to be positive.

The 4,138 cases reported in Tennessee on Tuesday, April 7, was not quite double the 2,239 reported a week earlier, on Tuesday, March 31.

The number of deaths on Tuesday, 72, was about double the 37 reported four days earlier, on Friday, April 3.

The number of cases in Tennessee on Tuesday was up from 3,802 on Monday, when there were a total of 65 deaths, 352 hospitalizations, and 356 recoveries. It was up from 3,633 on Sunday, when there were 44 deaths, 328 hospitalizations, and 295 recoveries.

Regarding recovered patients, the Tennessee Department of Health said those are patients who have been confirmed to not have symptoms and have completed their required isolation period—or it’s been at least 21 days since they had their first test confirming their illness.

The state does not report which counties the hospitalizations occurred in, and it’s not clear how many of the patients remain in the hospital.

Symptoms of COVID-19 include fever, cough, and shortness of breath. In most cases, those who are infected with the new coronavirus that causes the diesase are not hospitalized and they survive. Still, even those who do not need to be hospitalized often report fevers, fatigue, headaches, trouble breathing, coughing, and chest and body pains that can sometimes last for days. Others report milder symptoms or no symptoms at all. But in some cases, reportedly somewhere between about 8 percent to 20 percent, patients may need to be hospitalized, and some percentage of those patients need to be treated in intensive care and put on ventilators.

On Tuesday, the state reported that 15 of the deaths from COVID-19 have occurred in Sumner County northeast of Nashville. There have been 15 deaths in Shelby County, which includes Memphis in West Tennessee, and nine in Davidson County, which includes Nashville in Middle Tennessee. There have also been nine deaths in Hamilton County, which has 95 cases and includes Chattanooga in southeast Tennessee.

The other fatalities have been in Rutherford County (3) and Williamson County (3); Blount County (2) and Montgomery County (2); and Franklin County (1), Greene County (1), Hawkins County (1), Macon County (1), Marion County (1), Obion County (1), Sullivan County (1), and Trousdale County (1). Two non-Tennessee residents have died, and there is one death where residency hasn’t been determined yet.

There have been 281 COVID-19 tests of Anderson County patients, with 11 positive and 270 negative.

Shelby County and Davidson County had more than 800 cases each on Tuesday, with 888 in Davidson County and 835 in Shelby County.

Seven Nashville-area counties had 1,896 total cases on Tuesday: Cheatham (13), Davidson (888), Robertson (65), Rutherford (178), Sumner (361), Williamson (278), and Wilson (113). That was about 46 percent of the state’s total.

Two Memphis-area counties in West Tennessee, Fayette and Tipton, had 21 and 38 cases, respectively. But it’s not clear how many cases might be in surrounding counties in Arkansas and Mississippi.

Besides Knox County, here were the case totals in other counties surrounding Anderson County on Tuesday: Campbell (6), Loudon (15), Morgan (5), Roane (5), Scott (4), and Union (1).

There have been a total of 52,874 COVID-19 tests across the state. The 4,138 positive tests were about 7.8 percent of the total tests, and the 48,736 negative tests were about 92.2 percent of the total.

Demographically, the largest number of cases was still in patients who are 21 to 30 years old. There were 905 cases, or about 21.9 percent of the total, in that age group.

There are more than 500 cases each in the next four age groups: 31-40 years old (684 cases), 41-50 (639), 51-60 (755), and 61-70 (508).

Older adults and patients with certain pre-existing conditions are reported to be more vulnerable to COVID-19. But health officials and health care workers caution that, while younger patients and those without pre-existing conditions might be less vulnerable overall, they can, for reasons that aren’t clear, still succumb to the disease—and might help spread the illness even if they don’t get sick.

The percentage of patients who have tested positive and been hospitalized in Tennessee is about 9.9 percent so far (408 hospitalizations out of 4,138 cases).

The percentage of patients who have tested positive and died in Tennessee is about 1.7 percent so far (72 deaths out of 4,138 cases).

COVID-19 is caused by a new coronavirus that was first reported in Wuhan, China, in December. Since then, it has spread around the world, infecting more than 1.4 million people and killing more than 80,000. There were 400,000 cases in the United States, where more than 13,000 people had died as of Tuesday afternoon, April 7.

Across the world, the virus has led to quarantines and other disruptions to daily lives, including school and business closures; lockdowns and shutdowns; some hoarding and panic buying at grocery stores; travel bans and closed borders; and economic slowdowns and large number of job losses.

Globally, more than 300,000 patients were reported to have recovered from COVID-19 by Wednesday afternoon.

Here were the county totals of COVID-19 in Tennessee as of Tuesday, April 7, 2020:

• Anderson—11
• Bedford—10
• Benton—4
• Bledsoe—3
• Blount—41
• Bradley—25
• Campbell—6
• Cannon—7
• Carroll—8
• Carter—3
• Cheatham—13
• Chester—7
• Claiborne—2
• Clay—1
• Cocke—2
• Coffee—7
• Cumberland—32
• Davidson—888
• DeKalb—7
• Dickson—27
• Dyer—10
• Fayette—21
• Fentress—2
• Franklin—14
• Gibson—13
• Giles—3
• Grainger—3
• Greene—18
• Grundy—16
• Hamblen—4
• Hamilton—95
• Hardeman—6
• Hardin—2
• Hawkins—16
• Haywood—6
• Henderson—2
• Henry—6
• Hickman—2
• Houston—2
• Humphreys—4
• Jackson—3
• Jefferson—10
• Johnson—2
• Knox—143
• Lauerdale—4
• Lawrence—6
• Lewis—2
• Lincoln—6
• Loudon—15
• Macon—12
• Madison—43
• Marion—21
• Marshall—9
• Maury—26
• McMinn—3
• McNairy—5
• Meigs—2
• Monroe—6
• Montgomery—65
• Morgan—5
• Obion—3
• Overton—4
• Perry—3
• Polk—3
• Putnam—57
• Roane—5
• Robertson—65
• Rutherford—178
• Scott—4
• Sequatchie—1
• Sevier—18
• Shelby—835
• Smith—3
• Stewart—2
• Sullivan—26
• Sumner—361
• Tipton—38
• Trousdale—14
• Unicoi—1
• Union—1
• Warren—2
• Washington—27
• Wayne—2
• Weakley—5
• White—2
• Williamson—278
• Wilson—113
• Non-Tennessee resident—281
• Pending—68