The Nashville mayor's office might be covering up COVID-19 numbers... because they're too low.

The coronavirus cases on lower Broadway may have been so low that the mayor’s office and the Metro Health Department decided to keep it secret.

Emails between the mayor’s senior advisor and the health department reveal only a partial picture. But what they reveal is disturbing.

The discussion involves the low number of coronavirus cases emerging from bars and restaurants and how to handle that.

And most disturbingly, how to keep it from the public.

On June 30th, contact tracing was given a small view of coronavirus clusters. Construction and nursing homes were found to be causing problems with more than a thousand cases traced to each category, but bars and restaurants reported just 22 cases.

Leslie Waller from the health department asks, “This isn’t going to be publicly released, right? Just info for Mayor’s Office?"

“Correct, not for public consumption,” writes senior advisor Benjamin Eagles.

A month later, the health department was asked point blank about the rumor there are only 80 cases traced to bars and restaurants.

Tennessee Lookout reporter Nate Rau asks, “The figure you gave of 'more than 80' does lead to a natural question: If there have been over 20,000 positive cases of COVID-19 in Davidson and only 80 or so are traced to restaurants and bars, doesn’t that mean restaurants and bars aren’t a very big problem?"

Health department official Brian Todd asked five health department officials, "Please advise how you recommend I respond. "

Of those "more than a thousand cases" (note: not deaths) how many are people in nursing homes who would have contracted some sort of seasonal respiratory ailment anyway? 90%? 95%?