During today’s joint COVID-19 Task Force/Shelby County Health Department update, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland announced micro-loan programs — two of them — to “assist Memphis businesses experiencing hardship.”
University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center’s Regional Biocontainment Laboratory, the Plough Center for Sterile Drug Delivery Solutions, and hospitals have taken leadership roles in COVID-19 testing, producing and delivering sanitizing products that are in severe shortage, and drug/vaccine development.
When will Memphis reopen and how will that happen? The answers involve the sometimes conflicting perspectives of health, business and political leaders. It will ultimately involve discussions between local and state leaders, with potential input from one significant wild card: President Donald Trump.
The country is shut down, the city and county are shut down. This unyielding novel coronavirus is driving every public and private narrative from Presidential press briefings that sometimes raise as many questions as they answer, to chats with friends and neighbors at least 6 feet apart.
If it were a normal school year, Vanderbilt medical students Thomas Day and Tita Peña would be spending their time at the Shade Tree Clinic, offering free medical care for Nashville’s uninsured.
“The coronavirus does not discriminate.” I’ve heard some variation of that assertion made many times since the first case of COVID-19 appeared in Tennessee early March.
During their daily briefing Saturday, the Shelby County Health Department announced there are 1,147 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Shelby County, an increase of 98 cases since Friday.
As COVID-19 testing continues to expand in Shelby County over the next few weeks, officials say people who are feeling just slightly under the weather should be next in line for a screening.
