By 7:15 a.m. Thursday, most students at Soddy-Daisy High School had made their way upstairs to start their first block classes as the sun shone brightly, giving one of the second-floor hallways an orange glow.
CHI Memorial employees and staff must be vaccinated against COVID-19 by Nov. 1 in order to keep their jobs, making the hospital system Chattanooga's first to join the nationwide trend of requiring vaccines for employment.
Becky Barnes, Hamilton County's top health official with more than four decades of public health experience, will retire from her role as health department administrator in September.
The latest COVID-19 resurgence in Tennessee shows no sign of slowing, with Hamilton County continuing to experience more than 100% increases in new cases, hospitalizations and deaths in the past 14 days.
As a spike in pediatric respiratory illness pushes children's hospitals across Tennessee to their limits, officials at the Children's Hospital at Erlanger say they're prepared to handle more pediatric COVID-19 patients as the highly contagious delta variant sweeps through predominantly unvaccinated populations.
An increase in pediatric respiratory illness, including but not limited to COVID-19, is straining children's hospitals across Tennessee, and the state's health and education commissioners on Friday said mask mandates for schoolchildren remain a local matter, up to school districts.
Erlanger Health System's 2021 "Believe Bash" - the annual fundraising event benefiting Children's Hospital at Erlanger - has been "canceled due to rising COVID-19 numbers and community health and safety concerns," according to a news release issued Thursday.
July marked the first time since March 2020 - when much of the world shut down in response to the novel coronavirus - that members of the Meigs County Senior and Adult Center could gather at the facility.
Tennessee's latest COVID-19 surge continues to gain steam and is now straining hospitals, which are struggling to navigate staffing shortages along with a higher patient burden, the state's top health official said Monday.
Hamilton County Schools will encourage but not require students and staff to wear face masks when class resumes in two weeks, as county officials raise increasing alarms about a worsening COVID-19 pandemic surging again, powered by the delta variant.
