Clark tops 1,000 COVID cases
Published 11:25 am Friday, December 4, 2020
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On a day when the Clark County Health Department reported the most ever single-day cases of COVID in the community, Clark County also rose above the 1,000-case mark.
On Wednesday, there were 30 new cases of the potentially deadly respiratory virus reported.
There were 24 cases reported Thursday, bringing the total to 1,027.
Of those cases, 182were active Thursday, and 830 had recovered.
There have been 15 deaths reported locally, including three in the last two weeks.
Since Monday, there have been 84 cases reported, including 14 Monday and 16 Tuesday.
Clark County’s incidence rate was 49.6 on Thursday, which puts the community in the state Department for Public Health’s red zone, which is for those counties with an incidence rate of 25 or higher.
On Thursday afternoon, all but six Kentucky’s 120 counties were listed as red. Those remaining counties were listed as orange, which is for communities with an incidence rate of 10 to 25.
Also on Wednesday, Gov. Andy Beshear announced a record number of new COVID for the second consecutive day. There were 72 deaths in the state reported between Tuesday and Wednesday.
“We’ve got the foremost experts in the country saying we’ve got a winning game plan,” Beshear said. “The question is, is everybody going to do their part to execute that game plan? We can stop this surge. It’s in our hands. I certainly am going to try my best each and every day.”
Dr. Steven Stack, commissioner of the Kentucky Department for Public Health, updated Kentuckians on projections for hospitalizations in December and January, which vary depending on statewide compliance with recent COVID-19 restrictions.
“Even when researchers at the University of Louisville analyze and look at the data and do their own modeling, they are finding, like others are in other places, that these measures are likely to reduce substantially the number of people in hospitals,” Stack said. “And remember, some of those people go into the ICU, some of those people are on ventilators — those can have long-term debilitating effects — and of course, some of them die. Every time we choose to disregard the guidance, we will see more people get infected, more strain on our hospitals and more loss.”
As of Wednesday, there had been 186,765 cases reported since March in Kentucky leading to 1,980 deaths.
At least 28,468 Kentuckians have recovered.
As of the Nov. 29 White House Coronavirus Task Force report, which is the latest available, Kentucky is in the red zone, indicating 101 or more new cases per 100,000 population. Kentucky has the 23rd highest rate in the country.
Kentucky is also in the red zone for overall test positivity, indicating a rate at or above 10.1 percent, with the 16th highest rate in the country. On Wednesday, the positive rate was 9.62 percent.
Also on Wednesday, there were 1,768 Kentuckians hospitalized with complications from the virus, including 427 in ICU and 234 on ventilators.