County, state continues to see rising number of coronavirus cases

“Things don’t look good for Ohio County,” Judge-Executive David Johnston said Tuesday in reference to the rising number of COVID-19 cases in the county.

In the past seven days, Ohio County reported 132 new positive cases of COVID-19 and two new deaths attributed to the virus. Last week the Green River District Health Department, which includes Ohio County, had a total of 800 new positive cases with 18 deaths.

The county currently has 258 active cases and a death rate of 1.7%. “We are not doing well at all,” Johnston said.

Monday’s report from the Kentucky Department of Public Health, there were 18 new cases of COVID-19 among the residents and one new staff member case at the Beaver Dam Nursing and Rehab Center bringing the total number of active cases to 37 residents and and nine staff. There has been a total of 40 resident cases and 14 staff cases over the course of the pandemic. Beaver Dam Nursing and Rehab Center has not had any deaths attributed to the coronavirus. Signature Healthcare had no new residents or staff cases on Monday, according to DPH with four staff and zero residents listed as having an active case.

The state continues its struggles with the rising number of cases statewide as all but three of Kentuckys 120 counties, Breckinridge, Meade and Owen, were in the critical “red zone” for current incidence rate. Those three states were listed in the accelerated “orange zone.”

The 7-Day incidence is calculated by taking the total number of unique cases in each county over the past 7 days, divided by 7 to get a daily average, divided by the U.S. census bureau county population, and multiplied by 100,000 to get the incidence per 100,000 people.

On Thanksgiving day, the state reported the highest total of one day positive cases with 3,870. The states current positivity rate is 9.42 as of Tuesday.

In the past seven days, there have been 16,389 new positive cases of COVID-19 reported in the state with 99 new deaths attributed to the virus.

To date, the state has had 179,041 positive cases of COVID-19 and 1,908 deaths.

Gov. Andy Beshear announced Monday that the state is expecting to received approximately 38,000 doses of the vaccine against the virus as early as mid-December.

“Those will be provided to 38,000 individuals. We can go ahead and provide the first of these shots, and then we will receive the booster shots about three weeks later,” said Gov. Beshear. “We will be ready on moment one that we’re able to provide these vaccines.”

The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines both require an initial shot followed by a booster shot.

While the number of doses and allocation plan are subject to change, the Governor said as of Monday the majority of the state’s initial vaccine shipment will go to long-term care facilities; about 12,000 doses will go to hospitals to help inoculate health care workers.

“Every week we do not vaccinate long-term care residents, we lose them. With vaccines, we can provide such better protection to these individuals,” said Gov. Beshear. “We’ve been taking aggressive steps since the beginning of this virus, committed to fighting back, not surrendering to it or accepting avoidable loss.”

The state’s immediate goal is reducing COVID-19 deaths. With 66% of the deaths coming from LTC facilities, vaccines could help significantly decrease Kentucky’s COVID-19 death toll beginning in January. Also, because LTC residents tend to require the most care, vaccinations in LTC facilities will help reduce COVID-19’s burden on Kentucky’s health care system.