Starting in the new year, the Tennessee Department of Health will stop reporting COVID-19 data on a daily basis and move to weekly updates instead at a time when the omicron variant is fueling a record-breaking surge in new cases across the state.
Tennessee Health Commissioner Dr. Lisa Piercey announced the changes during a news briefing on Dec. 22, and department of health spokesperson Bill Christian confirmed in an email Thursday the state will move ahead with its plan.
“Weekly data updates will occur on Wednesdays of each week, and the data will include the previous Sunday-Saturday,” Christian said, adding that this time frame coincides with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
Piercey said that the decision to report COVID-19 data weekly instead of daily is a move to incorporate ongoing monitoring of the pandemic with the department’s pre-pandemic priorities, such as addressing an all-time high level of drug overdose deaths in the state.
“It’s exceedingly clear there’s not going to be a date in time where [COVID-19] goes away or where we don’t have to worry about this or work on this for quite some time in the future. I know we all have been praying that there is, but it’s not in the foreseeable future. So the impetus is on us to make sure we operationalize this, whether that’s testing or vaccine, and not have a separate operation for COVID and a separate operation for typical operations. We need to normalize this into our daily routine,” Piercey said during the briefing.