Cheatham and Robertson County Schools are closed for the rest of the week. Cheatham County Schools closed earlier in the week over winter weather-related issues and extended the closure due to staffing challenges caused by illness. Robertson County Schools cited the same reason for closing the rest of the week.
Clarksville Police say a man’s body has been recovered in an area where an SUV went off the road and into the Red River along Wilma Rudolph Boulevard. The victim has been identified as 44-year-old Juan Salazar. He had been missing since January 16th. Authorities discovered his vehicle and had been scouring the water for days. The investigation continues.
The Tennessee Department of Health is out with its weekly COVID-19 update. TDH says there were over 16-thousand cases per day last week. The positivity rate was 41 percent between January 9th and the 15th. There have been over one-million-650-thousand COVID cases in Tennessee since the outbreak began.
The federal government has started taking orders for free at-home COVID tests. The tests can be ordered at the website COVID-tests-dot-gov. There’s a button to click on that leads to a Postal Service page where folks can enter their information and order the tests. There’s a limit of four tests per person and they start shipping out in late January.
Governor Bill Lee wants more flexibility in how Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act money is spent. Governor Lee is among 16 Republican governors who sent a letter to President Biden yesterday asking for more state control over the money. The letter issued by the Republican Governors Association asks Biden and federal agencies to come up with regulations and guidance deferring to states to give them “maximum regulatory flexibility.” The governors from Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, and South Carolina were also among those who signed the letter.
