COVID-19 vaccines have arrived in Kentucky

On Monday, Gov. Andy Beshear celebrated that COVID-19 vaccinations have begun in the commonwealth.

The Governor watched as five doctors and nurses from UofL Health first received the vaccine this morning. Soon after, other healthcare workers from UofL Health, Baptist Health Lexington and the Medical Center at Bowling Green began receiving inoculations.

“Today is the most exciting day that I’ve had, I think that we as a commonwealth have had, since March 6, when we had our first diagnosed COVID case,” said Gov. Beshear. “Today marks the beginning of the end of COVID-19. We are going to defeat this virus in 2021. This is a moment that we have hoped for and prayed for. The effectiveness of this Pfizer vaccine and the Moderna vaccine that’s going to follow is nothing short of a modern medical miracle.”

Seven Kentucky hospitals were expected to receive vaccine shipments Tuesday: Baptist Health Corbin, Baptist Health Louisville, Baptist Health Madisonville, Norton Hospital, Pikeville Medical Center, St. Elizabeth Healthcare Edgewood and University of Kentucky Medical Center.

On Monday, Beshear announced Monday’s reported number of new cases, 1,802, was the first “real decline” since the week of Oct. 12 as the total number of cases of COVID-19 in the state neared a quarter of a million since March.

On Friday, the state’s positivity rate, based on a seven-day rolling average, fell below 9% for the first time since Dec. 10. The rate has been between 9 and 10.07% the entire month. The rate is currently at 8.58%.

All but two of Kentucky’s 120 counties remain in the critical red zone for current incidence rate. Fulton and Owsley counties are in the accelerated orange zone.

The seven-day incidence is calculated by taking the total number of unique cases in each county over the past seven

days, divided by seven 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.

Ohio County, which had a triple digit incidence rate last week has now fallen to 64.9, as of Tuesday afternoon. Despite the decrease, new cases of COVID-19 in the county are continuing to surge.

In the last seven days, according to the Green River District Health Department, there were 115 new cases in the county and three additional deaths attributed to the virus. As of the latest report, there has been a total of 1,324 cases in Ohio County with 370 of those still listed as active. There have been 27 deaths.

The district, which includes Ohio, Daviess, Henderson, Webster, McLean, Hancock and Union counties, had 877 additional COVID-19 cases and 32 deaths last week.