Expect cases to rise after reopening
Officials will gauge how much is too much
Local health officials and leaders expect the phased reopening of Shelby County’s economy to increase the number of people infected with COVID-19.
At present, health officials see the virus’ growth in Memphis and Shelby County as roughly flat, but they, like experts nationwide, estimate a significant number of people are asymptomatic carriers of the disease. They don’t know how many. For several weeks, Shelby County has been at an equilibrium with the virus’ transmission rate — each new infection is resulting in about one more infection.
With restaurant dining rooms at 25% capacity and places of worship reopening, that transmission number, and,
thus the rate of new infections, is expected to go up. But officials said Friday they are hopeful it won’t be a spike, just a mild rise.
“I think we actually expect it to increase. Anytime you remove restrictions and you haven’t changed the parameters of the disease itself — we don’t have a vaccine approach or anything like that. We anticipate that it will increase and it will reach a new level of stability,” Scott Strome, executive dean of the College of Medicine at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center said.
What that rate of infection climbs to could dictate the success and speed of reopening.
Strome said, “We have to understand what that new level of stability is, and can we tolerate that new level of stability? Those are going to be large public health questions, but those are the questions that we as a society have to answer.”
And, on Friday, leaders warned that the region’s progress was not permanent, it is tenuous and a result of the safer-at-home orders issued in late March. They also sought to remind the public that entering Phase 1 is a gradual step, not a gigantic leap.
Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said, “This is not back to business as normal.” He said social distancing will still be enforced. He urged people to remember that they are “safer at home,” and if people don’t abide by social distancing it could result in “losing the progress we’ve made so far.”
Dr. Jon Mccullers of UTHSC described entering Phase 1 of the Back to Business framework as a bit of an “experiment.” He said health officials are comfortable embarking on that experiment but will be monitoring its progress. He also said people may not need to use the services that are becoming available once again.
“The ability to go out into public doesn’t mean you have to go out into public,” Mccullers said. “In general, if you’re worried about contracting this disease, you should not go out.”
Each of the three phases is at least two weeks in length. Strome said the public should not be surprised if Phase 1 takes longer than two weeks.
“No one is really talking about it moving to Phase 2 to at least two weeks. And two weeks is probably really early ... it will probably be three weeks, a month or maybe even longer,” Strome said. “The plan lets us go back, and so if we begin to notice a severe drift-up in cases, the plan lets us return to more stringent measures.”
Shelby County Health Director Alisa Haushalter made clear Friday that if the number of cases grow exponentially or the transmission climbs precipitously, rollbacks could come.
“If we begin to see a resurgence that is exponential growth or if we see if that replication rate ... significantly goes up, that will be reason for us to take pause, step back and consult with each other. We’ve had a very collaborative approach thus far and make some sound decisions based with the information at hand,” Haushalter said.
Mccullers said, “We would hope that we aren’t going to see a spike in cases. I might expect that as we start to have an increase in social interactions ... that we may see a trend toward a higher rate of daily cases, but I would hope that we would not be seeing a spike, which would mean this is really getting out of our control.”