Former Tennessee governor and U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander is mourning the passing of his son Andrew. The Nashville music publisher died on Friday after a short illness. Andrew was a graduate of University School in Nashville. He was 52.
A Nashville megachurch is moving its services online. Mt. Zion Baptist Church held its New Year’s Eve service virtually and will do the same for the rest of its services this month. The church says the change is being made over surging COVID-19 cases. Mt. Zion Baptist Church has 33-thousand members.
Airlines say they were forced to cancel around two-thousand flights yesterday, including 48 at Nashville International Airport. Multiple airlines canceled around 23-hundred flights across the country and over 39-hundred worldwide. Southwest, United, American, SkyWest, Frontier, and Spirit blamed a mixture of COVID-19 issues and bad weather in Chicago. Several airlines are battling staff shortages with incentives, including United offering triple pay to pilots and Spirit giving cabin crews a special bonus to work on flights through Tuesday.
Tennessee has received shipments of two antiviral COVID-19 treatments. The state department of health reports that Walmart pharmacies got the two oral drugs, developed by Merck and Pfizer. A limited supply of 6,000 arrived in the state, with more expected. The treatments were approved by the FDA and are expected to help treat the severity of coronavirus.
