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As the number of known COVID-19 cases in Hamilton County grows, the county, the city of Chattanooga and the area hospitals are scrambling to expand screening and testing availability needed to curtail further spread of the virus.
At a news conference on Friday afternoon, the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Health Department announced that the number of known cases in the county had risen to eight in one week since the first local case was announced.
A 73-year-old man in Nashville became Tennessee’s first fatality linked to the new coronavirus, authorities said late Friday.
Since local providers began testing for the new virus, the health department had received a total of 57 test results, with 49 of those returning negative, from both public and private labs. It’s impossible to know how many tests are pending, since the department doesn’t know how many samples providers have shipped to private labs. However, the county has isolated or is monitoring 36 more residents for possible COVID-19 infection, according to a health department spokesman.