Rhea County coronavirus cases rise by 13
Confirmed coronavirus cases in Rhea County, Tennessee, over the last week have increased from 197 to 210, adding to a 14-fold increase triggered by numerous cases confirmed in mid-May among asymptomatic migrant workers on a local farm.
Rhea County Executive George Thacker has been anticipating the increase for at least a week but was unsure how big it would be. The increase since last Thursday only raised the county count by 13.
“I was expecting it to be worse but it didn’t happen,” Thacker said Monday morning. “I’m glad.”
Thacker posted the Tennessee Department of Health’s most recent totals on social media Saturday and called for caution among residents in a social media video statement as he awaited the farm cases’ impact.
Thacker said he believes the increases in confirmed cases are coming from increased testing, which he predicted would keep adding to the county’s total.
Meanwhile, people still can get free tests, including free drive-thru testing being offered from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday at The Family Church on Rhea County Highway in Dayton, according to Thacker. There are also a number of locations in the Chattanooga region where free testing is available.
Rhea County’s positive cases were holding at around a dozen for days until May 21, when the impact of the farm’s cases drove
numbers up to 188. Then the positive case count rose to 193 on May 22, added another on May 23 and 24 and two more May 25 to bring the total to 197, according to state health records. That number lingered until one case was added May 28 followed by 11 on Friday and one more on Saturday, bringing the total to 210 over the weekend.
Thacker believes the high volume of current testing is probably fueling the current increase. State figures also show the number of recovered cases at 114, which is more than half of those tested so far.
Jon Schwalls, spokesman for Henderson Farms, where much of the recent case surge happened among workers, said last week that all the workers were tested as a group May 18 and results from those tests were returned May 19 and 20.
“They’ve required no medical treatment, and the Rhea County Health Department continues daily to monitor the situation and everyone has remained healthy,” Schwalls said Thursday.
Officials have announced no link between the farm and the more recent positive cases.
Dayton physician Dr. Craig Swafford said in a social media post following the farmrelated increase that health officials were working to make sure all the workers had what they needed to avoid infecting anyone else.
Swafford was unavailable Monday to talk about the more gradual recent increase, staff at his office said, but he noted in his May 21 post that local experience with the coronavirus diverges from the state’s or the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s and the local infections might last longer than thought earlier.
“It has been the experience of the medical staff at Rhea Medical Center that some people that have been infected have taken over three weeks to post a negative test afterwards,” he said. “This means that they are potentially contagious for longer than CDC guidelines or Tennessee Department of Health recommends. Therefore, your local physicians and hospital recommend repeat testing for everyone that tests positive before they resume contact with the general population.”
Swafford recommends Rhea County residents work with their own doctors so their caregivers have a sense of the situation and can participate in diagnosis and treatment, and so they “can have insight to the number of people affected.”
“We can help ensure your access to repeat testing for safe resumption of work and contact with the general population and any medical needs during your convalescence,” Swafford said in the post. Most of the more than 200 comments on the post praised Swafford for providing his thoughts and offering insight into the county’s recent outbreak.