Zero.
No new Covid cases were reported to the Shelby County Health Department (SCHD) Tuesday. The last day no new cases were reported was March 12, 2020. That was two years, three weeks, and three days ago.
But the figure does not mean Covid is gone in Shelby County. The seven-day rolling average of new cases was 31 Tuesday, and 14 new cases were reported on Monday.
However, nearly all Covid metrics have been trending down here for awhile now. For example, the test positivity rate — the average number of all positive Covid tests reported to the health department — was .6 percent last week. That figure was at a record-high 45.5 percent in December, at the height of the Omicron surge.
Chip Washington, the health department’s public information officer for the Covid-19 Response Team said “there could be any number of factors” for the zero new cases reported Tuesday. He said the figure could be because of a lower number of people being tested, people doing at-home tests and not reporting to the SCHD, increased vaccinations, and more.
As of Tuesday, only 230 people were reported to the SCHD to have Covid; 43 of those were pediatric cases.
As of Tuesday, 3,251 people had died of Covid since March 2020.
