Memphis not using tools to end COVID-19
Many are still hesitant to be tested, vaccinated
The Memphis area in recent weeks has seen increasing COVID-19 cases and a transmission rate that has crept back above 1, meaning the pandemic is growing, rather than shrinking. The UK strain has taken over and other, more virulent variants have been identified locally. While Shelby County is much better off than other places around the U.S. and the world, the pandemic has not shrunk enough to make another surge impossible, local experts said.
However, the county has two important tools to stop the pandemic — testing and vaccinations. Currently, both are being underutilized.
Data from the Shelby County Health Department shows test positivity rates — which can fluctuate dayto-day for a number of reasons — have been increasing since early March. The reproductive rate of the virus has also been increasing since the beginning of March, when it was at its lowest point since the beginning of the pandemic.
Concurrently, demand for COVID-19
vaccines has dropped. Local officials have tried a variety of tactics to try to increase uptake, including nixing appointments, setting up pop-up sites around Memphis and offering incentives, like gift cards, MEMPOPS and Grizzlies gear.
Doug Mcgowen, city of Memphis chief operating officer and county vaccine czar, said Federal Emergency Management Agency personnel who had been deployed to Memphis to help increase the pace of vaccinations could leave next month, rather than extending their stay, due to low vaccine uptake.
On Thursday, he pleaded with people who have not yet been vaccinated to go get shots.
“Let’s not let this opportunity go by,” he said. “We have this unprecedented opportunity of federal, Department of Defense, state and local cooperation that provides us this huge capacity to vaccinate people in Shelby County and the surrounding communities. We ought not squander this opportunity to get as many people vaccinated as quickly as we can.”
As of Wednesday, Shelby County was 43% of the way to its vaccination goal, according to the Memphis and Shelby County Joint COVID-19 Task Force. New data from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention estimated 14% of county residents were “extremely hesitant” to be vaccinated and almost a quarter of the population has some hesitancy.
A plurality of the vaccine doses Shelby County are given out at the Pipkin site, but it is nowhere near its capacity. The site has the ability to give 3,000 shots a day or 21,000 shots a week. Since it opened two weeks ago, it has operated at about 50% of its capacity and has never given more than 2,000
shots in a day.
The city has the capacity to vaccinate 60,000 individuals every week. From May 14 to 20, fewer than 20,000 vaccine doses were administered, according to data from the city.
“We’ve seen a slack in urgency of a lot of things,” said Dr. Steve Threlkeld, cochair of the infection control program at Baptist Memorial Hospital-memphis. “Social distancing, testing and vaccinations right now.”
Threlkeld said the decrease in testing presented a number of problems for Shelby County. Testing people who are symptomatic and their close contacts remains the best way to identify and isolate the virus. Knowing where the virus is, also lets public health officials know where they need to target resources, whether that is testing or vaccine education campaigns.
“The virus is still alive and well,” he said. “We’ve had a number of people vaccinated. That helps. Herd immunity is not a switch that we throw. The more people we vaccinate the more difficult it is for the virus to get around in the community. And make no mistake, it certainly is still getting around.”
Testing is also essential for identifying the more infectious, and in some cases more virulent, virus strains which are on the rise. The UK variant is now the dominant virus strain in Memphis and the Brazilian variant has been identified locally.
“In order for us to do sequencing, we have to have somebody present to be tested,” said David Sweat, chief epidemiologist and deputy director of the Shelby County Health Department.
He said testing rises with the epidemic curve, meaning more people get tested as the virus spreads and more people fall ill. However, that makes asymptomatic detection difficult and puts public health officials slightly behind the pandemic.
Last week, Sweat said labs sequencing samples of the virus from people in Shelby County found the UK strain, another case of the Brazilian strain, a case of the South African strain and evidence of a new strain from New York.
Sweat said people are tired of the pandemic and everything that goes with it — masking, testing, social distancing and vaccinations.
Shelby County is fortunate not to be seeing the same surge as other parts of the country, like Michigan. But Memphis is still not in a place where it is immune to another surge, Threlkeld said.
“Testing remains an important way for us to hold off the virus while we’re getting everybody vaccinated,” he said. “We can certainly lose lives because we don’t go to the trouble to accomplish that.”
Corinne S Kennedy covers economic development, soccer and COVID-19’S impact on hospitals for the Commercial Appeal. She can be reached via email at Corinne.kennedy@commercialappeal.com or at 901-207-3245.