The White House released an extensive COVID-19 report for all 50 states today, revealing that the Tullahoma-Manchester area is currently in the ‘yellow zone.’ The term ‘yellow zone’ means that an area during the last week both new cases between 10-100 per 100,000 population, and a diagnostic test positivity result between 5-10%, or one of those two conditions and one condition qualifying as being in the ‘red zone.” The White House report notes: the top 12 locations are selected based on the highest number of new cases in the last three weeks. Tennessee as a state is currently in the ‘red zone,’ meaning there are more than 100 new cases per 100,000 population last week, and in the ‘yellow zone’ for test positivity. Tennessee has had 155 new cases per 100,00 population within the last week, compared to the national average of 119 new cases per 100,000 population.
“The federal government has deployed the following staff as assets to support the state response: 3 to support leadership, administrative, operations, and logistics activities from FEMA; and 2 to support medical activities from VA.”
Policy Recommendations for Counties in the Yellow Zone in Order to Preempt Exponential Community Spread
Public Messaging
• Wear a mask at all times outside the home and maintain physical distance
• Limit social gatherings to 25 people or fewer
• Do not go to bars or nightclubs
• Use take out, outdoor dining or indoor dining when strict social distancing can be maintained
• Protect anyone with serious medical conditions at home by social distancing at home and using high levels of personal hygiene
• Reduce your public interactions and activities to 50% of your normal activity
Public Officials
• Limit gyms to 25% occupancy and close bars until percent positive rates are under 3%; create outdoor dining opportunities with
pedestrian areas
• Limit social gatherings to 25 people or fewer
• Institute routine weekly testing of all workers in assisted living and long-term care facilities. Require masks for all staff and prohibit
visitors
• Ensure that all business retailers and personal services require masks and can safely social distance
• Increase messaging on the risk of serious disease for individuals in all age groups with preexisting obesity, hypertension, and diabetes
mellitus, and recommend to shelter in place
• Work with local community groups to provide targeted, tailored messaging to communities with high case rates, and increase community
level testing
• Recruit more contact tracers as community outreach workers to ensure all cases are contacted and all positive households are
individually tested within 24 hours
• Provide isolation facilities outside of households if COVID-positive individuals can’t quarantine successfully
Testing
• Move to community-led neighborhood testing and work with local community groups to increase access to testing
• Surge testing and contact tracing resources to neighborhoods and zip codes with highest case rates
• Diagnostic pooling: laboratories should use pooling of samples to increase testing access and reduce turnaround times to under 12
hours. Consider pools of 3-5 individuals
• Surveillance pooling: For family and cohabiting households, screen entire households in a single test by pooling specimens of all
To read the comprehensive report in its entirety, including all 50 states, follow this link.