Those grieving remembered them in color, wearing mint green for 10-year-old Jadon Knox, pink for 6-year-old Ashlynn Luckett and blue for 16-year-old LeQuan Boyd. Their lives, snuffed out by shootings over one January weekend in 2020, were celebrated in crowded churches with overflowing pews.
Memphis and Shelby County are experiencing the highest rates of COVID-19 infection and hospitalizations since the pandemic arrived in March 2020. Meanwhile, vaccinations in the community are off to a bumpy start, which health officials attribute to supply uncertainties.
Throughout the first week of January, a record number of people were sick in Memphis hospitals with COVID-19. The first few days of 2021 saw more than 600 people in the hospital each day. On Wednesday, there was a record 661.
The COVID-19 death toll in Shelby County could accelerate in the next eight weeks if the pandemic is left unchecked. People could begin to die by the dozens each day and Shelby County could see about 1,000 more people perish between now and mid-February, projections from the Memphis and Shelby County COVID-19 joint task-force show. Such a… Read More
The first COVID-19 vaccinations in Shelby County have begun as medical workers at all of the Memphis-area hospital systems — including the county’s first confirmed COVID-19 patient — started to receive the first doses of the Pfizer vaccine this week.
The in-house COVID-19 testing program at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is one of the fastest labs in the Memphis area, handling nearly 9,000 tests in a two-week period with a result turnaround time of less than a day, according to recently released state data. The lab at Regional One Health likewise had a listed… Read More
As the Christmas week began in the Mid-South, healthcare workers were faced with a startling juxtaposition: the hope provided by the commencement of COVID-19 vaccinations and the grim reality that as cases and hospitalizations continue to rise, healthcare systems are quickly running out of workers to treat all the patients coming in.
COVID-19 vaccinations will begin at Memphis’ University of Tennessee Health Science Center Saturday, the university announced Friday. Several hospitals in Memphis began vaccinating frontline workers earlier this week. Scott Strome, executive dean of the UTHSC College of Medicine, said the college is “delighted.” Strome credited Kennard Brown, the executive vice chancellor and chief operations officer,… Read More
