745 New COVID Cases Reported on Tuesday

The Hamilton County Health Department reported 745 COVID-19 cases on Tuesday, bringing the total number of people to have been diagnosed with the virus since the beginning of the pandemic to 77,290.

The health department reported five new deaths on Tuesday raising the total number of people to have succumbed to the virus in Hamilton County to 916. On its Website, the health department notes that the high number is due to “the review of death certificates by the Office of the State Chief Medical Examiner.”

There are currently 219 COVID patients in area hospitals with 45 of those in intensive care units.

Fifty-five more people in East Ridge were diagnosed with the virus on Tuesday. The number of cases reported in East Ridge now stands at 4,608 with active cases of 382. The active cases number has not been updated since Jan. 6.

About Dick Cook

Dick Cook has lived in East Ridge since the Kennedy Administration when his parents bought a house on Marietta Street. Dick graduated from ERHS in 1976 before going on to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga where he studied Political Science. Dick worked for the Chattanooga Free-Press and the Chattanooga Times Free Press for 22 years. Free-Press Sports Editor Roy Exum plucked him out of production in 1989 and gave him a job as a sports reporter. Dick covered everything from prep sports to the whitewater events on the Ocoee River for the 1996 Olympics. When Chattanooga's two paper's merged, he became the Crime Reporter covering both the Chattanooga Police and Fire Departments. He was among reporters who were honored by the Associated Press for the TFP's coverage of the 2002 fog-shrouded crash on I-75 in Catoosa County, Dick and his wife, Cathy, live on Marlboro Avenue where they are seen frequently chasing around their three grandsons.