Covid cases are on the decline in Madison county but the hospitals continue to be short-staffed

JACKSON, TN (WNBJ)-

Today's covid briefing with the Jackson-Madison County Health Department announced lower covid numbers but officials are still concerned about the days and weeks to come.

“We were getting about seventy-one new cases a day; well, our new seven-day average is about thirty-three point eight cases a day,” says the director of the Jackson-Madison County Health Department Kim Tedford.

Although cases continue to decline Amy Garner the spokesperson for West Tennessee health care says that the surge is far from over,

“Even though our active cases are going down, we still have patients that are lingering in the hospital for months at a time because this illness is so severe…deaths and hospitalizations lag behind the new case numbers and that’s exactly where we find ourselves right now, we’re seeing an increased number of deaths in our hospitals.”

On Friday the hospital reported a record eleven deaths all within a twenty-four-hour period. There are ninty-three active covid cases in the Jackson-Madison county general hospital. The hospital is also seeing an additional sixty-five patients that are no longer covid-positive but remain hospitalized due to covid compilations.

Garner says that the biggest problem that the hospital is facing is a shortage of staff,

“We currently have over eight hundred vacant positions in our system, and so if you are needing a job please visit our wth.org website, we have jobs in almost every area…we need all the help we can get currently.”

The hospital has received help from the national guard and the national disaster medical system to cover for their low staffing.