NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WMOT/AP) -- Several of Tennessee COVID-19 metrics are improving, but the effort to get the state's resident immunized against the illness is faltering.
Statewide, hospitalizations have now fallen 11 days in a row. Tennesseans under hospital care peaked January 6 at more than 3,300 cases. As of Monday morning, that number was down to roughly 2,700 hundred hospitalized, with about 400 on ventilators.
New case counts and virus related fatalities were also down statewide last week. However, 651 Tennesseans died of COVID-19 complications during the week that ended Saturday. Since the New Year began, the state has averaged 87 deaths each day.
It will take more than three years to immunize Tennessee’s 6.8 million residents against COVID-19, if vaccinations continue at the current pace. Some 331,000 state residents have been inoculated since mid-December, an average of about 9,200 vaccinations a day.
Keep in mind that the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines being distributed in Tennessee require that each person receive two shots a few weeks apart to be effective.
However, late last week the state did add new tools to its pandemic response website to make it easier to track inoculation progress in each of Tennessee’s 95 counties.
