Vanderbilt: If transmission goes up as state reopens, Tennessee may need second lockdown

COVID-19 analysis by researchers at the Vanderbilt School of Medicine shows that Tennessee’s social distancing is working — but finds reopening too soon could undo all that work, even as Gov. Bill Lee announced that process will start Monday.

"We want to minimize the amount of time we all spend under restrictive social distancing protocols," John Graves, a Vanderbilt professor studying the virus, said in a briefing with reporters Friday.

The goal is to study whether Tennesseans would need to revert to stricter social distancing in response to new cases overwhelming hospital capacity.

If the order statewide was lifted on May 1, days after Lee’s plan has restaurants reopening, and the transmission rate rises to just more than 1.1, hospitals could be overwhelmed within 129 days, or the end of August, the study found.

Read more: https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/health/2020/04/24/tennessee-study-coronavirus-transmission-rate/3021322001/