“If you’re a virus, you want to propagate,” said Jon McCullers, who is on the Shelby County Board of Health and is chief operating officer for the College of Medicine at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center.
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
At the rate COVID-19 is growing in Shelby County, current ICU capacity will be depleted by mid-August. Sunday, Aug. 1, hospitals across the region were holding patients in emergency rooms because all beds were full. At Methodist University, nearly 25% of patients in the emergency room were COVID-positive, a level the doctors on duty suspect… Read More
As new mask mandates rolled in nationwide Wednesday following the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidance that vaccinated people in high-transmission areas should still mask indoors, the Shelby County Health Department will not comment on what residents should do. Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris said Wednesday, July 28, the county is still reviewing the… Read More
Shelby County will not follow the state Health Department’s mandate to no longer promote childhood vaccination, including for COVID-19, officials said Wednesday. “Our mission is to promote, protect and improve the health of ALL in Shelby County,” Shelby County Health Department acting director LaSonya Hall said in a prepared statement.
“Viruses exist to thrive. ”That’s a line from William Haseltine’s recent essay for Scientific American. Haseltine is a former Harvard School of Medicine professor and author of “Variants! The Shape-Shifting Challenge of COVID-19.” Even when straitened to the single question, “How Will the Coronavirus Evolve?”— and that’s the title of his essay —COVID-19 is a… Read More
Thursday marks the first day kids ages 12 through 15 can get vaccinated in Shelby County. That is a huge milestone that adds about 50,000 more eligible people to the pool that could be vaccinated,” said City of Memphis Chief Operating Officer, Doug McGowen. The FDA gave the Pfizer vaccine emergency use authorization Monday, with… Read More
You won’t have to wear a mask in most places in Memphis and Shelby County starting Saturday. Residents will not be required to wear masks out in public, but private businesses, including stores and restaurants, can still require customers and employees to wear them.
