TDH adjusts COVID-19 reporting, including changes to reporting on active/recovered cases and county case count
The Tennessee Department of Health has made several changes to its COVID-19 reporting.
TDH released Thursday that it would no longer report recovered cases, but will report the total number of inactive and recovered cases, which will include individuals with coronavirus who are 14 days or more past the date of onset of symptoms and have not died or are still known to be showing symptoms.
This change is aligned more with what is now understood about the infection period of COVID-19, as recent CDC data shows most patients with the virus are no longer infected after 10 days. This change has also played a role in how active cases are tracked.
The department of health previously used a 21 day threshold period to consider someone recovered. The department is also rearranging 1,700 cases to be added or taken away from different counties, due to people living in a zip code that covers more than one county.
Below is the Northeast Tennessee county-by-county data of what the COVID-19 outlook looked like prior to the change on Wednesday and what the data now looks following the change in reporting:
(Wednesday Sept. 3)
Carter- 866 (19 deaths-240 recoveries) 607 active cases
Greene- 857 (17 deaths-301 recoveries) 539 active cases
Hawkins- 679 (13 deaths-228 recoveries) 438 active cases
Johnson- 427 (1 death-132 recoveries) 294 active cases
Sullivan- 1,730 (26 deaths-1,251 recoveries) 453 active cases
Unicoi- 232 (1 death-92 recoveries) 139 active cases
Washington- 1,812 (13 deaths-839 recoveries) 906 active cases
Total- 6,603 (90 deaths-3,137 recoveries) 3,376 active cases
(Thursday, Sept. 4)
Carter- 953 (19 deaths-789 inactive/recoveries) 145 active cases
Greene- 878 (18 deaths-720 inactive/recoveries) 140 active cases
Hawkins- 680 (13 deaths-626 inactive/recoveries) 41 active cases
Johnson- 428 (1 death-390 inactive/recoveries) 37 active cases
Sullivan- 1,800 (26 deaths-1,349 inactive/recoveries) 425 active cases
Unicoi- 230 (1 death-204 inactive/recoveries) 25 active cases
Washington- 1,766 (13 deaths-1,536 inactive/recoveries) 217 active cases
Total- 6,735 (91 deaths-5,614 inactive/recoveries) 1,030 active cases
