MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Shelby County health officials say there is still much to learn about the novel coronavirus.
“It was two months ago last night that I was interviewing the very first case in Shelby County, and now we’ve had 3,113 people diagnosed,” said David Sweat, Shelby County’s chief of epidemiology.
Since the first case of COVID-19 in Shelby County, nearly 40,000 people have been tested. Of those tested, more than 3,000 tested positive.
“There’s no disease really–except for maybe some of the very, very common sexually transmitted diseases–that produces that number of cases for us to investigate on an annual basis much less in a two months period of time,” Sweat said.
Men and African-Americans are also dying at high rates.
Sweat says most of the cases are among those between the ages of 25 and 44 years old. He says that may be the reason for a recent increase in cases among children.
“When someone in the household has COVID-19, it is very likely that all the people in the household will acquire covid-19 including the children,” Sweat said.
The health department reports African-Americans lead the number of cases in the county while cases continue to rise in the Latino and Hispanic communities.
Sweat says there’s much to learn about the virus, especially among those who initially test positive and then after testing negative, test positive again.
“We are still learning a lot about this virus. This virus only came into the worlds consciousness last November,” Sweat said.
To continue research on this virus, Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris says he will present a proposal to the Shelby County Commission next week to expand the health department.
Harris says this will add more positions and services to COVID-19 patients. Harris says that proposal is expected to cost around 10-million-dollars
