MEMPHIS, Tenn. — The Memphis area hit a new milestone in the battle against COVID-19. For the first time in a long time, Shelby County reported no coronavirus deaths over weekend.
While that is good news, medical experts are delivering it with a cautious dose of reality.
“Anytime that we’re able to get through a weekend in an epidemic with no one dying, even just one day, that’s like a great thing,” said Dr. Jeff Warren, a member of both city council and the COVID task force.
But Warren also acknowledges, we’re nowhere near the end.
“And here’s the thing. We are going to have to live differently for a long time, OK,” he said.
His colleague on the COVID-19 Task Force, Dr. Manoj Jain, couldn’t agree more.
‘We’ve got to take this step by step,” Jain said. “If you begin your social interactions today, 14 days from now, we will see a flood of patients comng in into the emergency room.”
They both believe that part of doing this correctly means continuing what got us here: social distancing, more face masks, good hand washing and sanitizers, along with aggressive treatment of patients testing positive for COVID-19.
“I think we can pat ourselves on the back that we’ve we’ve begun to do a good job, but we’ve got a lot further to go,” Warren said. “All it takes is one funeral or, you know, one social event where someone has this virus. And a lot of people in these smaller communities are going to be very ill very quickly.”