Geoinformatics and Disaster Science Lab

Although we haven't been posting too much (spring semester is tough!), we continue to update our dashboards and create county threshold charts for the NE TN Health Department. Over the past month+ there's been a mixture of good and not-so-good news.

The good news: Vaccination rates continue to rise regionally and nationally, and vaccines are available in TN to everyone 16+. You can use this Vaccine Finder to schedule an appointment or just walk in at some locations: https://www.vaccines.gov/search/. The FDA will soon (likely next week) authorize the Pfizer vaccine for ages 12-15 (https://n.pr/3ujFAVL). And emergency use authorization for children 2-11 could come as early as September. Children represent a larger proportion of cases now than they ever have, but that mostly reflects a major reduction in cases amongst older age groups (https://n.pr/3eRC12n). A clear sign of how effective the vaccines are.

The not-so-good news: While vaccination rates continue to rise, uptake is slowing in some areas. The percent tests positive across Tennessee is decreasing in some areas (good, for example Washington County's % tests + is down to 10.5% after being above 17% a few weeks ago), but rising in others (not so good). Beyond TN and the USA, some countries are suffering from devastating case increases, especially India (https://n.pr/2POu4Tj). Global vaccination efforts have a very long way to go for a variety of reasons.

Overall, there are now 12 counties across Tennessee that have fully vaccinated over 30% of their entire population. Approximately 25% of Tennesseans are fully vaccinated and ~34% have received at least their first shot. This places TN in the bottom 5 compared to other states. When you look at the demographics a bit closer, almost 53% of eligible Tennesseans (16+) have received at least their first shot. Opening eligibility up to younger ages should help increase our rates some through the summer.

Some counties have seen cases increase recently, while others have seen case rates remain flat or decrease slightly. You can check out 7-day and 14-day rate charts for the eight NE TN counties below. Without a portion of our population vaccinated, it seems that we would likely be experiencing a major spring surge right now - most of the more transmissible variants have been found in our region (https://bit.ly/3b3Ggqz).

Another reason we wanted to post again is because the Tennessee Department of Health will no longer be providing daily Facebook updates, but they will continue to post their datasets (which is what we use, along with data from the NC Department of Health and Human Services and Virginia Department of Health, to update our Dashboards). Check out our dashboards below for more information. We are undergoing a data entry transition but hope to keep these updated daily or at least every other day (except on weekends when not all health departments release data).

TN Mobile: http://arcg.is/1Xy8Xv
TN Desktop: http://arcg.is/er5OP
Regional: http://arcg.is/1fHLjq