Welcome to Phase 3. Nashville is loosening some restrictions (although the mask mandate stays in place) as the city's numbers continue to decrease and the majority of metrics remain in the green.

After an initial spike in Knoxville as kids returned to campus, active cases at UTK have declined dramatically. On Sept. 13, UT recorded 768 active cases and 2,480 in isolation/quarantine. By Sept. 30, that number had dropped to 170 active cases and 712 in isolation/quarantine. Vanderbilt has done an outstanding job keeping COVID at bay since the beginning of the school year, with the week of Sept. 21-27 returning only 38 positive results. Similarly, MTSU in Murfreesboro reports only 37 active student cases and 7 active faculty cases on campus.

While numbers improve across the state's largest cities and college campuses have steadied or declined, numbers are picking up in rural areas as restrictions ease and mask mandates expire. Quarantine fatigue has hit everyone more than seven months into the pandemic, but rural areas that didn't see early case counts might be even more tempted to let down the guard on tried and true mitigation methods. Case counts, hospitalizations and deaths across the state's 87 rural counties now significantly outpacing the state's eight largest cities.

Metro Nashville

As of 9:30 today, the city reported 29.065 confirmed cases, an increase of 60 since yesterday. There are currently 977 active cases in Nashville, 27,812 inactive or recovered cases, and 114 active hospitalizations (up 5 since Monday). With 276 deaths (up 3 since Monday), the city has a case fatality rate of 0.95%. In Davidson County, 389,644 tests have been administered with a positive rate of 7.5%.

On the trend lines, Nashville has 5 out of 8 in the green with the remaining metrics in the yellow. With a goal for transmission to be less than 1.0, the city's current transmission rate is 0.97. The 14-day case rate remains in the green with a flat or decreasing trend in new cases. Public health and testing capacity remain in the green, as they have throughout.

As of 9:30 am this morning, hospital floor bed capacity remained in the yellow with 14% availability, and ICU beds also remained yellow with 13% capacity. The goal for both hospital and ICU bed capacity is 20%.

The New Cases per 100K Residents remains in the yellow this week. The goal of the seven-day rolling average is to be at 10 or below. Currently, Nashville sits at 14.7 on this metric. The goal for the 7-Day Positivity Rate is to see a figure at 10% or less. Currently, Nashville remains in the green with a rate of 3.6% as of 9:30 this morning.

More detailed data is available on the Metro Dashboard. Click here for details.

Nashville's mask mandate continues alongside loosened restrictions for gatherings and increased capacity numbers in restaurants and bars.

Tennessee State

This afternoon, the Tennessee Department of Health (TDH) confirmed 1,293 new cases of COVID-19 with the state total hitting 197,432. There are currently 846 hospitalizations (up 29 from yesterday and 136 since Monday) and 2,501 deaths (up 47 in 24 hours) for a death rate of 1.27 (up from 1.23 on Monday). Nearly 2.9 million tests have been administered statewide (up 18,153 since yesterday). The number of inactive/recovered cases statewide is 180,781.