Virus cases younger in Shelby Co.
Shelby County Health Department officials said Wednesday that early analysis of coronavirus data shows many of the people who tested positive in the Memphis area are young.
This may explain why the Memphis area has not yet seen a large wave of critically ill patients arriving at its hospitals — young people are less likely to have severe symptoms — but the concern now is that young people might spread the disease to more vulnerable populations.
“What we don’t want to have happen is that to be taken home to our seniors or to be taken to the nursing homes and the hospitals, and so it’s important that everyone of all ages take action,” said Alisa Haushalter, director of the Shelby County Health Department.
She emphasized the importance of basic steps such as handwashing, staying at home and avoiding crowds. Many new cases were resulting from workplace transmission, she said, and urged people to stay home if they feel unwell.
As of Wednesday morning, the number of
reported cases of COVID-19 in Shelby County was 170, up from the 135 reported Tuesday, according to the city of Memphis.
David Sweat, chief of epidemiology for the health department, said that 74% of all reported COVID-19 cases in Shelby County were people 60 or under and that 38% of reported cases are people between 21 and 40 years old.
“One of the narratives that has been widely spoken throughout this pandemic is the risk to elderly folks and that younger people are less at risk,” he said. “That may be true for the worst outcomes. For fatalities and hospitalizations, the younger population may not be experiencing those outcomes at a high rate. There’s definitely diagnoses, there’s definitely transmission occurring at younger age groups.”
He said analyzing data related to the virus was difficult as 120 new cases were reported in a three-day period and that the health department is still investigating those cases.
“Although testing remains something that we would like to have more access to and a greater capacity to perform, in our health care systems locally, people are able to be tested,” he said at a press conference Wednesday.
He said that in addition to the 170 people who tested positive, many more tested negative. However, he did not specify exactly how many people have been tested in Shelby County.
Officials also said that it was not clear exactly how many people with the coronavirus had been hospitalized, but they believed it was about 5% of all cases in the county — or roughly 10 cases. Some of those people have been released from the hospital. Sweat said the numbers on hospitalizations were provided by infectious disease specialist Dr. Manoj Jain, who has been hired as an advisor to the city government.
The first documented coronavirus patient in Shelby County was treated at Baptist Memorial Health Care’s flagship hospital on Walnut Grove and later released. Sweat said he wasn’t sure if Baptist was still handling all hospitalized coronavirus patients. A Baptist spokeswoman declined to comment on the issue Tuesday, citing privacy restrictions.
Case spike is ‘alarming,’ says health department leader
A reporter asked if the sharp increase in cases should cause alarm, or if it was just the result of increased testing.
“It’s alarming to us,” Haushalter said. “I think this is consistent with what we’ve seen in other communities and by doing the daily press conferences and getting information out, we’re hoping that the community understands ... it’s having a significant impact on our community and that impact is going to grow greater over time. So we really hope that people can take all the steps they can to prevent transmission, especially transmission to people who are vulnerable.”
Medical workers test positive
Two employees of Regional One Health tested positive for COVID-19, the hospital said Wednesday morning. Two employees of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital also tested positive for the virus.
A reporter asked what the health department is doing to address illnesses among health care professionals and other frontline workers.
The health department aims to get test results quickly, identify the people’s contacts and put them into quarantine, she said. She repeated that people who are sick should not go to work.
“If it’s spreading in those populations, we are going to deplete our workforce. Because you have an individual who’s ill, but also all of their individual contacts will be quarantined. And we need our first responders to be able to respond,” Haushalter said.
The new drive-thru testing site at the fairgrounds has emphasized tests of first responders including city police officers, firefighters as well as health care workers, officials said.
Sweeping interventions made to reduce spread of coronavirus
Local public schools closed early this month and in the days since, and officials have continued to close other businesses and limit gatherings.
On Monday, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland announced a “safer at home” executive order, requiring all non-essential service workers to stay home, which went into effect Tuesday evening, along with similar orders from Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris and several of the suburban municipalities.
Haushalter issued a formal health directive on Tuesday ordering anyone in Shelby County not designated as working in essential services to shelter in place. The health department defines essential services as services that if interrupted “would endanger the life, health, or personal safety of the whole or part of the population.”
Federal, state, county and municipal services; social services; food and beverage sales; health care services; banks; laundromats; gas stations; media and funeral services are among those services considered essential. Some additional businesses — including daycares, hotels and hair salons — can operate under the directive within CDC guidelines, but the number of patrons in the businesses has to be 10 or fewer.
The directive expires after 30 days, but can be extended by Haushalter for another 30-day period.
Impact of interventions may appear in roughly 60 days
Haushalter says she expects that the dramatic interventions that governments are implementing today will take a while to show results. She measures the time in “incubation cycles”— roughly the life cycle of the virus — and says she expects it will take two to four incubation cycles for the social distancing to show its impact.
“And that means 30 to 60 days,” she said. “Some others may have a different perspective on that.
“But we can look to China and some other countries that have implemented very stringent measures, and it really was about the 60-day mark that they began to see impact based on the decisions that they’ve made.”