By Tom Latek
Kentucky Today
The number of new cases of COVID-19 in Kentucky continued to drop on Sunday, as did those hospitalized, due to the coronavirus.
There were 445 new cases reported to state public health officials on Sunday, raising Kentucky’s pandemic total to 416,215. Although numbers have often been lower on Sunday, due to some labs not reporting or closed on the weekend, it still marks a continued fall, as there were 679 new cases on Saturday, 963 on Friday, and 1,121 on Thursday. It also marks nine straight weeks of declines, according to the Governor’s office.
There were only nine counties recording double-digit case numbers: Jefferson had 75, Fayette 49, Boone 21, Kenton 18, Carter 15, Allen 14, Hopkins and Warren 11 each, and Bullitt with 10.
In addition, 16 new deaths were reported on Sunday. That was the same as Saturday and compares to 29 on Friday and 37 on Thursday, bringing the pandemic total to 4,982. Information on the latest victims’ ages and locations were not available.
There were 488 Kentuckians hospitalized on Sunday, due to the coronavirus. Of them, 118 were in the ICU and 69 were on a ventilator. All three figures are down from Saturday.
The state’s positivity rate was 3.99% on Sunday, based on a seven-day rolling average. That is up from 3.98% on Saturday, 3.88% on Friday, and Thursday’s 3.95%. Still, it remained below 4.00%.
The Beshear administration announced that as of Sunday, 995,784 Kentuckians have had at least their first of two injections of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, or the one dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine. This means the total should top one million on Monday. This includes participants in the state vaccination program, long-term care facilities program, federal direct program and federal pharmacy program.
Looking beyond Kentucky’s borders, Johns Hopkins University on Sunday reported there have been 119,764,490 confirmed cases worldwide, along with 2,651,578 deaths. In the United States alone, there have been 29,428,075 confirmed cases and 534,794 deaths.
To see the full daily COVID-19 report for Kentucky, which includes such information as the red zone counties and red zone recommendations, testing locations, vaccine information, the weekly White House Coronavirus Task Force reports for Kentucky, executive orders, and other information on the state’s pandemic response, go to kycovid19.ky.gov.
Gov. Beshear’s next scheduled live press briefing on COVID-19 is Monday afternoon at 4 p.m.. It can be viewed by the public on both his Facebook page and YouTube channel.
The Governor said last Thursday that he would update the coronavirus situation at Kentucky’s prisons during Monday’s press briefing.
