According to the CDC, the risk of being exposed to the coronavirus (COVID-19) for most people is low. The CDC recommends taking simple, everyday steps to avoid catching or spreading respiratory diseases including COVID-19. These include covering your cough or sneeze and thoroughly washing or sanitizing your hands. Call your doctor and stay home if you are sick. Get more information at CDC.gov/coronavirus or contact the Tennessee Department of Health coronavirus information line at 877-857-2945 from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily.

Nashville and Tennessee should expect to see a sharp rise in known coronavirus cases in the coming days and weeks as government and private laboratory testing revs up around the country, health experts said Friday.

While anxiety-evoking, the anticipated spike of these cases is a byproduct of progress, experts said. Lab tests reveal where an otherwise invisible virus is lurking, so testing will show if the virus is in just some communities or widespread in the U.S.

“The harder you look, the more you will find,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. The hospital is preparing to treat the virus while also having discovered at least one case among its own staff.

“We anticipate that there are now — we don’t know how many — but more cases of coronavirus infection in Davidson County and in the state of Tennessee and indeed the whole country," he said.

Coronavirus, or COVID-19, is a viral pandemic that has killed at least 4,950 people worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. As of Friday, the virus had been detected in 26 Tennessee residents, including 10 people in Davidson County. The Tennessee Department of Health now believes the virus has jumped from one Tennessean to another, rather than from someone who had traveled out of state — a milestone in the outbreak commonly known as "community spread."

As the cases grew on Friday, Mayor John Cooper announced he had formed a city-wide coronavirus task force that would unite government health agencies with leaders of Nashville’s hospital leaders. The force includes executives of Vanderbilt, HCA Healthcare and Saint Thomas-Ascension. City officials said the task force would communicate daily to coordinate coronavirus response across Nashville.

'Is ignorance bliss or is knowledge power?'

At least some of the recent rise in coronavirus cases can already be attributed to an increase in testing, which is underway at both the state laboratory and private laboratories around the country. As of Friday afternoon, the state government laboratory in East Nashville and the private labs had found 13 positive cases of coronavirus, each.

The state lab reports it also conducted 116 negative tests. Private labs have not released statistics on negative tests, so far.

Dr. Marc Calarco, a member of the Tennessee Medical Laboratory Board, said that soon the balance would shift, at least in part because the private laboratory industry has far more resources and capacity than underfunded government labs.

Calarco said the public may feel some anxiety as private testing causes coronavirus cases to grown, but he said that it is important to remember the virus already existed in those patients, regardless of if it was detected.

“Yeah, it’s going to freak some people out,” Calarco said. “But is ignorance bliss or is knowledge power?

“Whether it’s coronavirus or something else, I personally would rather have that information so epidemiologists can track data and raise awareness and maybe more financial resources will be allocated when these numbers are jacked up.”

President Donald Trump announced Friday he declared a nationwide state of emergency to combat the virus and partnered with the private sector to boost the availability of tests. Trump said Google was designing a coronavirus screening website and the Food and Drug Administration approved a new, faster test produced by Roche, a Swiss health care company, in a matter of hours.

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Labcorp, Quest Diagnostics start testing

Tennessee health officials have not said which private labs are doing the testing, but at least two large laboratory companies, LabCorp and Quest Diagnostics, have announced testing themselves.

Each of these companies have numerous locations in Tennessee, but these sites are generally used to collect samples from patients and are not where the coronavirus tests occur.

Rachel Carr, a spokeswoman for Quest Diagnostics, said the company was testing samples — including most likely samples from Tennessee — at a laboratory in Southern California. In the next few days, testing would begin at two additional labs in Virginia and Massachusetts, she said.

“We expect to be able to perform tens of thousands of tests a week within the next six weeks,” Carr said.

Neither LabCorp or Quest are actually seeing coronavirus patients directly or collecting the test samples themselves. Instead, anyone who thinks they may have the virus should see their doctor. Those doctors will then swab the patient's nose and throat and send the samples to private labs for testing. Individual members of the public should not go to the private labs on their own to request tests.

Tennessee Insurance Commissioner Hodgen Mainda said earlier this week that he had learned at a coronavirus briefing for government officials that a third laboratory company, American Esoteric Laboratories, would also being coronavirus testing. As of Friday, the company had not publicly announced the start of testing.

Brett Kelman is the health care reporter for The Tennessean. He can be reached at 615-259-8287 or at brett.kelman@tennessean.com. Follow him on Twitter at @brettkelman.