send them privately to me. A recording of the session will be made and posted to the UTIA coronavirus website. You can find that link on our webpage at UTIA.tenacy.edu. So let's get started, Tim.
How does the case count currently look for the University and the Institute in this new year? Thanks for kicking us off, Lisa. And welcome back, everyone, both back to work, if you will. I hope everyone had a great holiday break.
But welcome back to our fireside chat as well. Good to be with you again. As far as our case counts go, I'm afraid that most of my news is not terribly positive today. But I would also say it's not terribly negative either as much as we left a month ago.
So let me start out today as usual by sharing just a little bit of data with you to give you a snapshot of some key metrics. And then we'll go from there, get my screen oriented. All right, so we'll start out and this is the same series we've been looking at. I will say from a data perspective I've done a bad thing here.
If you'll notice on the bottom of that chart, the date line was on a once a week basis all the way up until this week. And now we've jumped from the 11th of December to the 8th of January. So it's not from a statistical point of view, the way we might like to portray things, but it seems to me the easiest way to continue to show you where we're at. So with that said, across the University today, both UTK and UTIA, we've currently got 42 employees that are in active, positive case of infection right now.
And we have 27 students that are positive cases that are active as of today. And if we look at quarantine and isolations, we've got 116 employees in quarantine and 101 students. And both of those data series show very little change from the last couple of months. They're higher than what we'd like to see, but we're not seeing at this point.
Let me back up again. We're not seeing huge spikes overall in the total numbers across the University. So what that suggests to me is that the practices will follow and are still being effective. They're still helping us to keep our numbers down in contrast to some of the state and national data that we'll look at here in just a moment.
Moving on to the Institute. We're currently in a state of having 13 active positive cases across campus. I'm sorry, across the Institute of Agriculture. And that is slightly higher than what it was when we left in December.
And when we last met in December, maybe I should say. So that's something to keep close eye on, obviously. If you think about it though, the those cases at this point are largely the result of context that would have happened over the past couple of weeks. During most of that time, we were not for the most part present on campus or in our offices across the state.
So I'm concluding by that that most of those positive cases are the result of context outside of the workplace. Because the workplace, again, by and large, we were not present at for the last couple of weeks up until this week. Nonetheless, we don't want any positive cases among our employees. So we need to be really cognizant of all the practices we can follow to drive those cases down, regardless of how the direct contacts or how the transmission is occurring.
And in terms of isolations, we see a slight increase there as well. Not too terribly different from the past couple of months, but we currently got 31 employees in us isolation status at this point. So not, again, not huge numbers. We're not seeing the order of magnitude increases that we're going to see just in a moment at the national level, but larger numbers than certainly what we'd like to see.
And we've got to stay diligent to keep those numbers down. In terms of national numbers, you're all seen in here in this as well. We remain at record high levels, unfortunately. And it's really pretty clear and distinct that these spikes are occurring following holidays.
And I'm not sure. I think my cursor will be visible. But if you look back at the first rather large spike we had following the outbreak, that's clearly the result of some July fourth activity, I believe. If you go a little further into the fall, you'll see another spike following Halloween about mid-November.
Going a little further, we see another spike in mid-December, which would appear to be a result of Thanksgiving activities. And that only leads me to believe that as we move into January, we'll see another increase or at least no major decrease anytime soon due to the holidays we just celebrated. So the numbers are high at the national level in showing no sign of decrease at this point. Let's hope that we've got some things coming that we'll address that.
We'll talk about those in just a few moments. And then in terms of data, let me just wrap up with this chart of the state of Tennessee and the number of new positive cases per day. If you look at the forecast line here, it looks pretty good, but actually the real, the actual data is not following what the forecast was. And we're seeing, again, larger numbers following the holidays.
And I expect those, unfortunately, are going to continue for the next week or two, at least. So not real positive news there about these positive cases either. You've seen that Tennessee is among the highest in the country in terms of incidents per 100,000 population. So we've got to do a better job statewide as well, trying to control the outbreak.
So that's a summary of where we're at in terms of our data and the same sorts of data that we've been looking at for the past several weeks. So with these obvious spikes, are there any changes in guidance for us as employees? Yeah, I've had a lot of questions about that, obviously. And you know, at this point, again, we're not seeing large transmission of cases in our workplaces.
So at this point, us and all the other campuses for that matter are really going to continue to keep our offices open, but do so using staggered or rotational staffing. We want to keep providing the services that people are counting on, but we want to do it as safely as possible. We should continue to have employees working remotely, and folks should probably reconfirm those plans with their supervisors just to make sure as the new year gets underway. We all know what one another's doing and what the expectations are, but by and large, I describe this as really being status quo.
We'll continue on as we were in December, just being probably even doubly vigilant, though, with regard to following CDC guidance. Do your daily house check, stay home if you're not feeling well. Even if you don't feel like you've got COVID symptoms, clearly we need to do everything we can to stay away from others if we're not feeling well. Wash your hands frequently and for at least 20 seconds.
Stay six feet apart and wear a mask anytime you're in the proximity of others. Just follow those practices. Be diligent about it. Don't waiver and we'll keep one another safe and healthy as we work through this process.
So I know there've been some questions about this too. What about restrictions on group gatherings? Yeah, Governor Lee, you probably saw I put out a new executive order, executive order 70, and the real, I think important point in that order was that that order limits social gatherings to 10 or less individuals. And we followed up on that limitation and on that restriction with the Governor's office.
And we were told pretty clearly that social gatherings was an intentional term there. It does not pertain to educational classes, educational activities. As you can see in the act, if you read it, it really doesn't even affect athletic events to a great extent. So the focus here was on really family and friends getting together and keeping those gatherings small, particularly in anticipation of the holiday period.
So because of that, we're not subject to that limitation in terms of educational classes, educational activities, but we definitely need to be really careful regarding any kind of group meetings or gatherings in our classroom instruction. We need to follow all of our guidance as we move back into the classroom here on campus as well. And let's remember any kind of proposed or planned meeting or event that could have more than 50 percent participants has to be pre-approved. And we're going to look at these really carefully in the next several weeks at least.
Let's be extra cautious until this surge in numbers starts to show some significant declines, especially given that right now most of these potential meetings or events or activities are going to have to be indoors due to the weather. Indoor is much riskier than outdoor events. So we really need to be conservative and cautious with regard to these group gatherings. And we'll continue to look at those carefully and most especially those that involve 50 or more participants.
So there's a lot of folks surrounding the vaccines that are being rolled out. The big question is when will we get vaccinated? Yeah, that's a great question. It's one I'm asked all the time and it's one I'm asking myself all the time as well.
So let me share a resource with you that I think will be helpful as we look at managing through the next several months. And it's a web-based resource that the state of Tennessee has provided. And I'm going to see if I can share that as well. And in today's email message that will go out right after this fireside chat will include a link to this website.
So the state has developed a pretty robust resource with regard to vaccines and vaccine phases. And this is what that webpage looks like. And if you scroll down on the very opening page of that vaccine webpage, it has a timeline and a chart for risk-based as well as age-based criteria for receiving the vaccine. And it outlines the risk-based phases in the individuals who are included in each of those risk-based phases.
And then if you're not specified in one of these risk-based phases, you'll be vaccinated according to the age-based criteria. So at this point, we've been told higher education is not listed in any of these phases. If you read through these, there's nowhere that says college or university, faculty or staff. And so at this point, again, the guidance we've gotten from the governor's office in the Tennessee Higher Education Commission is that we all fall into the age-based criteria phase.
So that would mean you would be eligible for vaccine according to this timeline and at these age ranges. So clearly, we're looking at the March at the earliest and probably into the second quarter of the year and then on into the third and fourth quarters of the year, at least at this point in terms of a projection for when vaccinations would be available. There are a number of individuals obviously in these risk-based criteria that are already in the process of receiving vaccinations. You can get a listing of each of those.
And there's detail information about each of these categories further down this webpage. I won't scroll through it right now, but there's a lot more information about each of these categories down there. Another resource on this webpage is a map, a real-time map that shows what phase each county is in. You can see that right now we've got counties that are in phase 1A1, 1A2, and 1B.
And if you want to determine specifically what any one county's phase is, you can point at that county and click on it. And here's Ray County, which shows it's currently in phase 1A2 and also in the age-based phase of those that are 75 plus. In contrast that to Johnson County, where there are already a risk-based phase 1B, but they're still at age-based phase 75 plus. So particularly for those of you across the state, this is a good resource, at least to see what vaccine phase counties are in and give you some idea of how progress is being made.
In addition to that, the health department has developed a resource for vaccine availability by county as well. And let me see if this will work. Good. So here's a listing of each county that's on that same website or link to that same website.
A description of the vaccine availability, and unfortunately as you went through here, right now, basically every county says they're either limited in vaccine availability or they have no vaccine currently available. It describes what phase they're currently in, which we just looked at a moment ago, and that it has a phone number to call for information or to attempt to schedule a vaccination. My understanding is you can dial all day long on most of these phone numbers and you are unlikely to get through, particularly in our larger metropolitan areas. But that information is all available when they say it'll be kept up to date.
And you can see this is up to date as of 7PM yesterday evening. So it is being kept current. So that's the vaccine availability. And then let me show you one more vaccine.
Okay, another good aspect of the website is the vaccine eligibility tool that they have online. And I'm not going to go through it, but you can click on this vaccine eligibility icon, and it will ask a series of questions and determine if you're currently eligible for vaccination. So for those of you that say, well, I'm not in the risk-based category, but I do have underlying health conditions, this tool will help you to know if you're in a status right now that's eligible for vaccination. So that's a helpful tool.
The challenge, of course, is you could be eligible for a vaccination. But if your county has no vaccine, it's really not terribly useful at this point. But we're all certainly hopeful that vaccination, vaccine distribution picks up speed and we have greater availability of vaccine in the coming weeks. And then finally, I'll wrap up this part of the discussion by mentioning if you go to the data tab and then click on COVID-19 county dashboard.
Let me see. I thought there was a map. Maybe I picked the wrong one. I did pick the wrong one.
So here's the statewide dashboard. And then you can probe deeper on each county my apologies. So this shows a map and indicates what percent of the population in each county has been vaccinated. And then it provides some demographic breakdowns as well that are statewide.
And again, you can go and probe deeper on each county at the other link that I just clicked on. So I think that's certainly helpful to know what kind of progress we're making. And I think as you look here, you'll see basically word about 1% to 3% of the population in any given county currently. And what we want to see obviously is for those percentage figures in every county to increase rapidly so that we can achieve a greater level of vaccination across the state.
So again, we'll share a link to that website. So you can all stay current with this. You can all get information update about vaccine availability, vaccine progress, eligibility by phase and so forth. And I'll just wrap up by indicating I know that there's a concerted and coordinated effort going on right now among higher education leaders to request that the Department of Health consider including higher education employees earlier under the risk-based phase.
In other words, somewhere in phase one or phase two, I think is what we would hope because of the fact that we're in contact with students, we're in contact with clients and that puts us at a higher level of risk. I'll keep you posted if there's progress made on that. And as you might guess, I would imagine every possible industry across the state is doing the very same thing that higher education is doing. And that is saying we want to get our vaccination sooner rather than later.
We'll do our very best advocate for that. But at this point, we don't have any further information other than to confirm to you that you will definitely be eligible on an age-based basis to be vaccinated. So check my notes and oh, so let me wrap this up with maybe some good news. Overall, they're tracking this vaccine administration by state across the entire country.
And as of Tuesday, Tennessee was in the top five states in terms of efficiency and getting the vaccination out. We're doing better than 45 other states in getting our folks vaccinated. So it's frustrating that we don't have more vaccinations completed than we do have, but relative to others, we're doing darn good. So hang in there.
I think we've got a good system in place. If we can just get the vaccine from the sources producing the vaccine, I think our states well equipped to really ramp up vaccinations to our population. It's just a matter of getting the vaccine right now. It seems to be the mean stumbling point.
So some good news with regard to vaccination delivery. Well, we do have a couple of questions in regards to vaccinations. One person said that UT had earlier stated that the vaccine would be required to be a requirement for staff. Is that the case?
And so would a clinic be established for staff to be able to receive this? I think the requirement is for the flu vaccine. And we cannot require the COVID vaccine because it's not available. And if we required it, and you couldn't get it, it would be awful hard to do your job.
So you know, that might be a mixed blessing there. On the one hand, you know, it's not required, which means, you know, you don't have to fulfill that requirement. But on the other hand, we would love to have everyone vaccinated, obviously. So right now, the only requirement is the flu vaccine.
And at this point, I don't have any expectation given the very stringent storage requirements for the vaccine. I think it's unlikely that the university will take delivery and offer clinics directly unless we contract with private service providers. So again, at this point, I know that private service providers are providing onsite vaccinations for healthcare workers, for retirement home and assisted living residents and so forth. But no plans that I'm aware of at this point to have any onsite opportunities for COVID vaccine at the Institute across the university or at any other university campus with the exception of the Health Science Center because of their involvement in healthcare.
So one person said, I do think they saw something that when the vaccine was available, that would be a requirement, at least a report whether or not you got it. We asked for an emergency rule to have the option to require it, but we have not required it. So there was certainly some talk about requiring the vaccine no doubt. But it is not a requirement.
We have, I think, approval to create an emergency rule to do that. But until the vaccine is available, it would be pointless to require something that can't be done. Exactly. So one person had a question about the phases that were mentioned on the state's website.
And in one of the categories, I think this person thinks it's phase two A. It said, I think it's a commercial agriculture workers. Any idea who that refers to you? Bear with me just a moment here.
Let me see if I can pull that up. It may be one we need to follow up on. But let me see. Yeah, there's really not much more guidance given on the website.
So my interpretation, commercial agriculture would include farmers. And I believe food processing is covered there as well. So that would be my understanding. And that brings up a good question.
Well, what about then those who are out helping commercial agriculture producers? You know, are they included there? And you know, I just don't know that we have the answers to those questions yet. So I think at some point, you know, we'll each have an opportunity to ring up our own health department and say, hey, I'm involved in commercial agriculture, or I'm involved in education when can I get my vaccination.
You know, I'm all four folks doing everything they can to get the vaccination whenever it's available. But I don't think we have any further guidance right now on the total definition of commercial agriculture, nor on what might be required in terms of proof to receive those vaccinations. I see Dave White's on here. Dave, do you know if any of those topics have been talked about at the EOC?
Good afternoon, Dr. Cross and everyone. So right now that is not been but a little bit more on the description of that what the Phase 2A critical infrastructure covers does cover, as you said, commercial ag and their definition is ag workers involved in the production of food supplies and commodities. So for us, I would probably cover a lot of our workers at the REX, the Research Education Center, would be my guess.
But as you point out still, it's based on availability of the ages throwing in. It's not going to happen until March April at the earliest. Great. Thanks, Dave.
Good to have a like one. So another question is that since K through 12 employees are on that list and can be vaccinated, this person was going to check into getting their vaccination as a 4-H agent because of meeting clubs in schools. So this person is asking if we get our vaccinations, will we be able to normalize our work activities individually? I think the answer to that is likely no, because I don't believe there's any really firm proof or evidence that just because you're vaccinated means you're no longer a carrier.
And so even if you've been vaccinated, while that protects you, that really we don't know if that really protects others or not who are unvaccinated. So in foreseeable future, I think we're still going to be wearing masks. I think we're still going to be restricted in terms of the size of our meetings and gatherings, and we're still going to be remaining socially distant. So unfortunately, I think what the vaccine does is give you some reassurance that you yourself hopefully will not be affected with the virus.
But it's not a sign that always will and just continue with your life as we were before, because unfortunately, not everyone's going to be vaccinated. So that's where we're at on that. And we do have one more. It's actually a comment, not a question.
A person just apparently must have had the best of either been infected or been exposed and had to go through the process with UT and was very complimentary of the contract tracing team saying that the ease of completing the forums and the communication was very professional information questions and answers were given in a timely manner. And they just wanted to make sure everybody knew the team was doing a great job over there. Oh, great, great comments and good to hear. And certainly we don't want anyone to be, you know, a positive taste.
But if anyone is positive, we don't want to be the cause of making that experience any worse. So glad to hear the positive feedback there. And I appreciate those that are completing those disclosure forms and keeping us informed because it's really hard for us to manage if we don't know the situation amongst our workforce. So it's really helpful to have that information.
Thank you and your co-workers for keeping us informed and keep up the good work on that as well. Great. Any other questions, Lisa? No other questions.
So if you have some final remarks, which I knew you will always have more to say, right? Well, first of all, next plan fireside chat will be February 5th, the first working Friday in February. But if there's, you know, substantial change in conditions or guidance or conditions, we'll schedule another one before then. So no news is good news when it comes to fireside chats at this point.
If you don't hear anymore from us, carry on as we described and it will be back with you in early February at the latest. And if conditions do change, we'll schedule something. Let me just mention briefly, you know, in the midst of all this COVID business, we've also seen this week some really shocking events, obviously, in the nation's capital. And I'm not going to give a big speech on this, but I want to provide a brief reminder to you that all of us need to be careful and think about any social media posts, any messages that we're putting out, and make sure those messages aren't inflammatory or discriminatory or biased in nature.
And I know we all have the right to freedom of speech. I don't want to interfere with that. But I also know that regardless of whether we say this is just our personal opinion, most of the time it's going to be widely known that you're an employee of the university. And if you're putting out inflammatory hate speech that seems to really attack one or more individuals or groups of people, you know, think carefully about whether that's going to be something you'd want to have published on the front page of the newspaper.
Take a look at what happened in the university of Tennessee Chattanooga just a couple of days ago. If you want an example, not to follow and be careful out there, I guess. So again, I don't mean this to be a squelch of your right to express views or opinions, but do so in a professional manner and do so in a way that you wouldn't be embarrassed if that post or message showed up on the front page of a newspaper, which it likely would if folks got wind of your employer and your role and your status as an ambassador at the university of Tennessee. So just a quick reminder there.
All right, enough of that. As for COVID, you know, we're definitely, I think starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Unfortunately, it's a really, really long tunnel and the light is very faint at the moment. You know, there's there's vaccines coming, but as we just talked about, as we're all a bit frustrated about, they're not here in wide numbers yet and we're going to have to continue to work through this.
So do the right things, wash your hands stay distant, wear your mask, all those things, hang in there, we'll get through it and we've demonstrated we'll get through it. We've done great since last March. So, you know, we're not at the end of this yet, but we know how to manage. We know how to take care of ourselves in one another.
We just got to stay committed to that. It's easy to get fatigued. I know we all are, but hang in there. I think working together will continue to make good progress, will continue to advance the university and achieve our mission of providing real life solutions to provide research, education and engagement across the state and across the world.
So I want to wish you each the best in getting started for a great 2021. I think it'll be a great year and I do think a year from now we'll look back and say that was a dark time. But boy, at least we survived and at least we prospered even during that time. So take care.
Hope you all have a nice weekend and we'll look forward to seeing you in a few weeks if not before. Hey, thanks everyone. Have a great weekend.