By every relevant metric, the COVID crisis in Tennessee is intensifying. Infections, hospitalizations, and fatalities are on the rise in the Volunteer State, where only about 40% of the population is fully vaccinated, and the Tennessee National Guard has been deployed to help bolster increasingly overwhelmed hospitals.
Tennessee parents who don’t want their children to mask up in the classroom can opt out of mask mandates. Governor Bill Lee issued an executive order Monday, Aug. 16, and now parents, politicians, and physicians are sounding off about it. Republican state lawmakers wanted Lee to call a special session to talk about getting rid… Read More
Friday morning, Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris, Shelby County Health Director Dr. Michelle Taylor, and Shelby County Board of Commissioners Chairman Eddie Jones toured Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital. In addition to the tour, they met with Dr. Nick Hysmith, Director of Infection Control, and Dr. Sandy Arnold, Chief of Infectious Diseases at the hospital.
To ease the medical staffing crunch, Gov. Bill Lee has twice lifted restrictions on who can provide patient care, including students in health care, retired staff, and doctors and nurses not licensed in Tennessee.Executive Order No. 83, issued Aug. 6, eased the restrictions again for these groups but did not ease supervisory restrictions on nurse… Read More
Every emergency room in Memphis is holding patients, often 24 hours or more, waiting for beds to open. Within days, the Memphis-Shelby County COVID-19 Task Force is expected to announce plans for how health care will proceed as the number of cases is expected to surpass last winter’s peak.
Across the Methodist Le Bonheur hospital system early Friday, Aug. 13, three ICU beds were available, a nerve-wracking statistic in a city where most emergency rooms are holding patients because beds are full.
The number of children sick with COVID at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital has more than doubled in a week. As of early Tuesday, Aug. 10, 17 children were hospitalized, including six in critical care. One was in the emergency room, waiting for a bed to open.
Memphis-area private schools are making decisions about how the 2021-22 school year will look amid rising cases of the Delta variant of COVID-19 and pediatric hospitals feeling its effects across the nation. Local private schools are implementing protocols at varying levels, some requiring universal masking and others leaving more choices in the hands of parents… Read More
