Williamson County Coronavirus Case Count

1. Hello Andrea,

   I was wondering how the number of active cases are confirmed? It appears to be just a mathematical computation: Total Cases – Recovered – Deceased = Active.

   Is there a role/list of individuals this computation is matched against and reconciled?

   If this is not performed, in the accounting world it is called a “plug” figure. We shouldn’t be measuring progress against and unsubstantiated (plug) figure.

   Thanks for your consideration.

   • Thank you, John. Via the TN Dept of Health website, “The number of active cases is based on the number of total cases minus the number of deaths and the number of recovered cases. TDH defines “recovered” as people who (1) have been confirmed to be asymptomatic by their local or regional health department and have completed their required isolation period or (2) are at least 21 days beyond the first test confirming their illness.”

2. Interesting how the numbers magically decline the day the decision to return to school is made… shouldn’t it be decided on consecutive days below the number rather than a single day? Either Friday’s fewer people go in, or the numbers are just not valuable.

3. With 4,875 “Positives”, 1,185 “Active”, 2,884 “Recovered” and 27 “deceased”, what is the remaining 779? What is the other category?

   • Hi Rob:

     The number in the “Total Cases” column shows the number of individual people who are either confirmed or probable COVID-19 cases. Individuals are only counted once in this number, no matter how many positive tests they might have had. The number of positive tests (the “PCR Positive” Column) is the total number of PCR-positive laboratory results that have been reported to Tennessee Department of Health.

   • Rob, it can certainly be confusing, but the number you’re looking at for August 22 (4875) is not how many individual cases of Covid-19 there are, but how many of the PCR cases have returned positive….keep in mind that some people get tested more than once over the course of their illness, and sometimes both (or more) of those tests are positive. On August 22, there had been a total of 4,096 total cases of Covid-19, AND of the 48,076 PCR tests that had been administered, on 4,875 cases were positive. So, the number of people who’ve had Covid-19 is different than the number of positive tests that have been administered.

4. Hi, Andrea. Thank you for these daily updates – they are very much appreciated! Quick question. As you likely know, the Williamson County School Board is using the active cases to categorize community spread for purposes of when to reopen and close schools. When the Reopening Framework was distributed, parents like me were under the impression that schools would not fully reopen unless community spread was reasonably in the low category. However, in the past 43 days, the County has had only 3 sporadic days (8/14, 8/21, and 8/22) of just barely low community spread but the Board has decided to move ahead with fully reopening schools anyway. When we had to make a decision about whether our son should attend remote/in-person or online, we selected remote/in-person because we assumed the Board would only reopen schools when community spread was low on a somewhat consistent basis (maybe a week or two of low spread) so that the reopening could be sustained. So … my question. There has been no press reporting on the Board’s unexpected decision-making process that is inconsistent with the Reopening Framework – shouldn’t that be a story? Thank you again! Jeff

5. As of 8/31/20, based on the TN Dept of Health data and their guidelines on a 21 day period that a case remains active, there is a backlog of 293 cases in Williamson County showing as active that should now be listed as recoveries. So instead of 1,085 active cases, Williamson County should now be at 792 active cases. I know at least one of the WCS Board Members has also mentioned this problem with the reported numbers at the last couple of board meetings and even indicated that he had spoken with the TN Dept of Health, who admitted there was an error causing the backlog and they were going to issue a correction. He indicated there were cases going all the way back to March that were still being listed on the active case list. To this point, no data correction has been issued. This is not just an issue with the Williamson County numbers. It’s an issue across many counties in TN. It’s a shame that the school board made the decision to start school remotely for the first 2 weeks based on flawed data. We were well below the .50% of active cases in the county requirement to begin the school year on campus. I am just happy at this point that WCS students are back on campus and hope it remains that way, but I feel that it’s important to point out that the active case numbers are being overstated. Andrea, I’ve been keeping an Excel doc of the backlog taking into account the daily updated numbers from the TDOH and would be happy to share that info with you if interested.

6. Can you please bring back the table with current and historical figures? (Or provide a link if it’s still around and I’m just missing it. I much prefer that to the graph that’s replaced it.

   • Thanks, Kathy. The table was accidentally deleted but it has been added back to the article. Thank you.

7. Are numbers no longer being reported or have new cases really gone to zero. Updates seem to get farther and farther apart. This page still shows data from January 4th in the table and the chart below it shows 0 new cases on the 11th and 12th. Is this reliable information?

   • Hi Gina, The Tennessee Department of Health is now only reporting cases on a weekly basis. They have updated their info as of January 8th and we’ve updated our table with the latest info.

     • Looks like they have stopped the weekly updates as well since last update is January 29 and here it is February 14.

8. Governor Bill Lee has signed SB 2188 that allows Ivermectin, an award-winning antiviral drug, to be available for the treatment of COVID-19 without a prescription in Tennessee!

9. Our State Tennessee has just passed a law declaring that the state must recognize natural immunity to the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) as having the same protective ability as the vaccines. Awesome how God works! Thank you Gov. Lee

Comments are closed.