Clark County, state see another record-breaking COVID week

Published 2:51 pm Tuesday, November 24, 2020

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It was another record-breaking week for COVID in Kentucky and Clark County.

In Clark County, there were 90 new cases of the potentially deadly virus reported from Monday, Nov. 16, to Sunday, Nov. 22, which is the most ever reported in a single week locally.

Clark has seen three back-to-back record-breaking weeks of new positive cases.

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The previous record was the week of Nov. 9-15, in which 71 new cases were reported. The week prior to that, there were 67 cases reported.

Clark saw its most cases reported in a single day last week as well, when there were 25 new cases reported Friday.

Clark also recorded its 13th COVID-related death last week.

As of Monday morning, Clark’s seven-day incidence rate was 35.46, which means the community remains in the state Department for Public Health’s red zone for counties with critical spread of the virus. 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.

As of the Nov. 19 state incidence rate map, all but three of Kentucky’s 120 counties were listed as red, which is for counties with an incidence rate of 25 or higher. The three others were listed as orange, which is for communities with accelerated spread, or a incidence rate of 10 to 25.

According to data provided by the Clark County Health Department Monday morning, there have been 838 COVID cases reported in the community since March. Of those, 133 were active Monday and 692 had met criteria for recovery.

On Sunday, Beshear announced 2,194 new cases, the most ever reported on a Sunday, marking the end of Kentucky’s highest ever week for COVID.

Last week, Beshear reported 3,766 new cases of the virus along with a number of mandates he hopes will curb the spread of the virus, including things like closing indoor dining, limited social gatherings to two families and eight people or less and prohibiting in-person instruction at public and private schools.

He warned Sunday that ignoring these steps might overload hospitals post-Thanksgiving.

“This upcoming holiday week is a special time for all of our families, and I know everyone wants to have a normal Thanksgiving after such a difficult year,” said Gov. Beshear. “I wish more than anything that we could go back to normal safely, but we can’t. In order to protect our only line of health care workers and all of our fellow Kentuckians, keep gatherings small (eight people or fewer and two households at most), wear a mask, wash your hands and stay six feet apart.

“If we have a major surge of COVID-19 cases after Thanksgiving, our hospitals will simply not have the capacity to give everyone the care they need. Nothing is worth that risk.”

There were 1,533 people hospitalized, with 389 of those requiring intensive care and 208 requiring ventilators.

As of Monday afternoon, there had been 158,100 positive cases in Kentucky leading to 1,787 deaths.

As of Sunday, the state’s positivity rate was 9.19 percent.