By Melissa Patrick
Kentucky Health News
Even as Kentucky's daily case rate, infection rate, positivity rate and hospital rates are steadily trending down, Kentucky's coronavirus-infection rate continues to be the highest among states.
Gov. Andy Beshear reported that Kentucky's weekly case numbers and positivity rates have now declined for four straight weeks.
"This is really good news," he said at his weekly pandemic press conference. "We're heading in the right direction."
In the Monday-to-Sunday reporting week ended Feb. 20, Kentucky reported 25,173 Covid-19 cases, down from 35,961 the prior week. Beshear said this is the lowest number of weekly cases in two months and is now below the Delta variant peak. He added that the hope is that Kentucky will drop to cases levels that were seen between the Alpha and Delta variant, when the state was reporting around 1,000 cases per week.
In the same reporting week, the average test positivity rate dropped to 13.10%.
Asked if he has considered moving his new recommendations up from March 14, especially with the Senate proposing that the state of emergency end on March 7, Beshear said that ending the state of emergency would have no impact on the need him to provide guidance and that while the trends could support the need for earlier changes, at this time his best prediction for the new guidance remains March 14.
Beshear continued to caution that while things are headed in the right direction, case numbers and the positivity rate are still too high. He urged Kentuckians to be patient just a bit longer, especially schools who are under pressure to make mask wearing optional.
"I would ask that everybody who can, be patient for the next couple of weeks because right now with the level that we're at and the low vaccination rates, I don't believe it's fully safe to go mask optional," he said.
At this time, only 51% of 16-17-year-olds, 48% of 12-to-15-year-olds, and 21% of 5-to-11-year-olds have received at least one dose of a vaccine.
From Saturday to Monday, the state reported 5,955 new coronavirus cases, bringing the seven-day rolling average to 3,489, down 276 from Friday.
Of the 969 new cases reported Monday, which is the lowest number of daily cases since late December, nearly 20% are in people 18 and younger.
The share of Kentuckians testing positive for the virus in the past seven days also dropped again, to 12.74%. This rate was 14.34% on Friday and 33.1% a month ago.
In response to a question, Beshear said that the current trends give us hope that we are moving from a pandemic to an endemic, meaning that the virus will have stopped being widespread, but instead remain present, but limited to particular regions. He also cautioned that it is hard to predict since this virus has "thrown us a lot of curveballs before."
Kentucky's weekly hospital numbers also continue to decline. On Monday, the hospitals reported 1,333 Covid-19 patients, with 270 of them in intensive care and 141 on mechanical ventilation.
Six of the state's 10 hospital regions are using at least 80% of their intensive care unit capacity, with three of them above 90%. The percentage of Covid-19 patients in the ICUs range from 6.6% to 29.2%.
The state's infection rate is now 52.53 cases per 100,000 people. Counties with double that case rate are: Perry, 196.9; Lee, 167.9; Leslie, 163.4; Wolfe, 129.7; Breathitt, 126.7; Floyd, 121.2; Menifee, 118.9; Owsley, 116.5; Knott, 114.8; Letcher, 114.7; Carter, 112.5; Powell, 112.1; and Whitley, 108.7.
Two counties are now in the "yellow zone" on the state's infection map, considered a moderate level of infection: Fulton, with 7.2 cases per 100,000 and Hickman, with 6.5. Nineteen counties are in the "orange zone," considered a substantial level of infection and the rest are in the "red zone," considered a high level of infection.
Kentucky continues to have the highest infection rate among states, even with a 31% drop in cases in the last 14 days, according to The New York Times. A Times analysis of infection rates in individual counties, using Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, shows that Kentucky has 10 of the top 20 counties for this measure. They include Perry, Estill, Floyd, Butler, Morgan, Clay, Breathitt, Carter, Whitley and Boyle.
The only metric that remains high in Kentucky is Covid-19 deaths, a lagging indicator that Beshear said he hopes will soon show a decline. From Saturday to Monday, the state reported 82 more Covid-19 deaths reported, with two of them in their 30s and four of them in their 40s. Kentucky's pandemic death toll is now 13,647.
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