Relief aid campaign will aim to help Memphis-area restaurant workers

In the first Memphis-Shelby County COVID-19 task force briefing since the new health directive was announced, health officials sought to relay context around COVID-19 fatalities, announced relief efforts for service industry employees, and defended their decision to enact the next health directive after the Christmas holiday.

After running through an update on COVID-19 data points, Shelby County Health Department Director Alisa Haushalter reminded listeners of how critical the next steps are from both health systems and individuals in Shelby County. The rate of infections and associated fatalities in Shelby County, Haushalter said, are very much on the line. 

"We know we're in a surge, but we're not at the top of the surge," Haushalter said, before stating the importance of individual and organizational actions in an effort to "blunt" the curve of COVID-19. 

When asked about the health department's decision to enact the next health directive one day after Christmas Day, Haushalter noted the health department typically issues health directives with two to three days notice, in order to give affected business owners time to plan.

'Pay it Forward' indicates some help is on the war for Memphis' servers  

The CEO and president of Regional One Health, Dr. Reginald Coopwood appeared in the task force briefing alongside his wife Erica Stiff-Coopwood to announce additional relief for a group of employees that have received little to no federal support for their industry during the pandemic: restaurant owners and servers.

Coopwood expressed empathy for the decisions that task force leaders make as they attempt to balance public health with economic consequences, but he also acknowledged that mitigation efforts have come at a cost for restaurant workers.

"I said to my wife, 'Erica the health department is trying to do the right thing for this community, but it's going to have an impact on businesses and people who work in those businesses,'" Coopwood said. 

To that end, Coopwood announced the creation of the "Pay it Forward Campaign", a relief fund established with the help of The Community Foundation of Greater Memphis.

The campaign will run from now until the end of January, and contributions to the Mid-South COVID-19 Regional Response Fund will go directly towards agencies working to distribute funds to service industry employees, such as the Metropolitan Inter-Faith Association, or MIFA.

Erica Coopwood expressed optimism that Memphis' tradition of generosity would come through.

"We are strong, and we are Memphis strong, and we don't have to wait on the fickleness of whoever to help our workers out," she said.

To donate to the Pay It Forward Campaign, visit www.payitforwardmidsouth.org.

1,000 additional COVID-19 deaths possible

While data on all causes of death are being tabulated by the West Tennessee Forensic Center, infectious disease doctor and task force member Dr. Manoj Jain confirmed COVID-19 complications are now among the leading causes of death for Shelby Countians. 

Jain, who presented updated fatality projections to the Memphis City Council on Tuesday, warned of an additional 1,000 deaths between now and Valentine's Day — should the pandemic continue without considerable mitigation efforts. 

Currently, he said, the county is experiencing 12 to 15 COVID-19 fatalities per day, "easily."

To calculate projections, Jain and Dr. Fridtjof Thomas, a biostatistician at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, calculated three scenarios for the area — worst-case scenario, the same rate, and best-case scenario.

The projections were calculated by looking at similar data points at other parts of the country. North Dakota, where cases soared throughout November, was used as an example of a worst-case scenario. 

Jain indicated Shelby County was very much on the path similar to the upper midwestern state. Should substantial mitigation efforts not be deployed at the individual level and at an organizational level, the county could see more than 74,000 new cases of COVID-19 and nearly 1,000 COVID-19 fatalities by Feb. 14

"If we take aggressive measures now, we can make an impact," Jain said. 

Should the region double-down on mitigation efforts, Jain said, a best case scenario is possible — on in which only seven Shelby Countians die every day from COVID-19, as opposed to 15 or 16.

Looking at the future of COVID-19:1,000 more people in Shelby County could die by Valentine's Day

Micaela A. Watts covers breaking news for The Commercial Appeal. You can reach her at micaela.watts@commercialappeal.com.