The purpose of this is to gather information on how the covid-19 pandemic is progressing in East TN. There are good sites that have info on the pandemic generally across the US and world, but Tennessee as well as local entities put out info that is not captured by these sites.

I am mostly doing this for my own curiosity as a parent in Oak Ridge, TN; though I work in science, I don’t work in epidemiology. Thus, I’m not doing any calculations of future spread, etc. – I’m taking published datasets and plotting them. For datasets that are presented as current conditions but do not have a history, I take a copy of them (usually every six hours) to be able to plot how they change over time.

Use the menu above for information on vaccinations, conditions in schools, and more. This site was last updated on 08:25 PM on Sunday May 15, 2022, though many data sources have a lag of a week or more.

As of the last time the data were updated, the 19 regional hospitals around Knoxville had only 32 ICU beds available of 317 total, based on info from the Knox County Health Department.

As of Sat, May 07, 2022, 26,208 people have died from covid in Tennessee.

The COVID-19 Forecast Hub makes predictions based on a number of models every week. They predict that in the week ending on May 21, an additional 36 people (range 9-93) will have died from covid in Tennessee, with 35 more covid deaths by May 28.

To get a vaccine to protect others and yourself, go to https://www.vaccines.gov/.

We can also plot using the new (Feb 2022) guidelines from the CDC for low, medium, high community level; I’ve also recalculated past data so we can see how it would apply then. The dashed line shows 500 new cases per 7 days per 100K people; under TN law, the governor can allow mask mandates if the level hits 1,000 cases per 14 days per 100K, so this shows the weekly average needed for this (but having 1,300 cases in one week, and none the week before, would also trigger this). All counties went well above the required threshold during the omicron wave but no masking requirements were reinstated, so this line might not be relevant in practice. Note that though I plot case numbers, which are used by the CDC among other metrics, these might not be the most informative given the current state of testing; the hospitalization data (see tab above) could be useful.

Cases per 100K and CDC color

Here are the percent of tests positive, averaged over a week. Since data are released with a lag, the dark gray rectangle shows the region from the last released data point to the present.

Percentage of positive tests over time

Here are the deaths over time associated with covid in East TN (excluding Dec 22, 2021, when there seems to be an error in the state’s death records). Since data are released with a lag, the dark gray rectangle shows the region from the last released data point to the present.

Covid associated deaths over time

A high level overview of the pandemic in Tennessee as a whole (using Tennessee’s definitions of groups):

Category Group Positive Covid Test Covid Death At Least One Vaccination Fully Vaccinated
Race American Indian or Alaska Native 1/10 1/1250
Race Asian 1/7 1/1111 55.9% 47.4%
Race Black or African American 1/4 1/278 42.8% 36.9%
Race Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander 1/4 1/556
Race White 1/4 1/270 46.5% 42.1%
Ethnicity Hispanic 1/4 1/667 64% 53.1%
Ethnicity Not Hispanic or Latino 1/5 1/278 55.6% 50.7%
Sex Female 1/3 1/294 64.3% 57.9%
Sex Male 1/4 1/233 57.3% 50.9%