The Shelby County Health Department will not move forward with phase three of the county’s "Back to Business" plan, which was slated to begin Monday.
In a last-minute announcement, officials reversed course and said some recent negative coronavirus transmission and hospitalization trends were too worrisome to keep lifting restrictions on non-essential businesses. Just last week, experts offered reassurances that while the number of cases were rising, it wasn't alarming.
Several factors tipped the scales for decision makers. For one, there were 256 new COVID-19 cases confirmed on Monday, the largest single-day increase since the pandemic reached the Mid-South.
Even Health Department Director Alisa Hasuhalter, who has sometimes chalked up spikes in cases to specific places or to testing backlogs, seemed concerned.
“These are signs to us that there is significant transmission within the community and that moving forward would put more people at risk,” she said at an afternoon briefing. "It would not be prudent for Shelby County, for us, to move into phase three at the current time."
She added that free COVID testing is being underutilized and hospitalizations are increasing.
With so many new cases, the Health Department is having a harder time keeping up with contact tracing or tracking down people who may have been exposed to the virus.
So far, there’s no rescheduled date for phase three, meaning businesses will remain at 50 percent capacity for the time being.
Moving forward, officials say, will largely depend on whether people keep wearing facial coverings and taking other precautions such as washing their hands.