By Tom Latek
Kentucky Today
The number of new cases and deaths due to COVID-19 fell in Kentucky on Sunday, while the positivity rate rose.
There were 275 new cases of the coronavirus reported to state public health officials on Sunday. That made three consecutive days of declining cases, which began with a peak of 834 on Thursday, fell to 713 on Friday, and 599 on Saturday. Part of the drop may be due to some labs that are not open or do not report results during the weekend, so it could take until Tuesday to see if there is an actual trend of declining cases.
Only three counties had a double-digit number of new cases: Jefferson 51, Fayette 34, and Kenton 14. This raises the number of positive cases of the coronavirus in Kentucky over the last 13 months to 437,312.
Four new deaths were reported by local health departments on Sunday, along with four more from the ongoing audit of death certificates since last fall. With those eight, there are now 6,338 Kentuckians who have lost their lives due to COVID-19.
On Sunday, there were 394 people hospitalized with COVID-19 in Kentucky, which is 19 fewer than Saturday. 98 were in the ICU, down seven from the previous day, while the number on a ventilator rose by one to 46.
The state’s current positivity rate is 3.48%, based on a seven-day rolling average of tests versus positive cases. While that is higher than Saturday’s 3.42%, which had ended a seven consecutive day streak of increases, it is still lower than Friday’s level of 3.51%. Kentucky’s positivity rate had been as low as 2.79% back on April 9.
Looking beyond Kentucky, Johns Hopkins University reported as of Sunday there have been 140,993,855 cases of COVID-19 around the world, with 3,014,575 deaths. In the United States, positive cases have now reached 31,650,993, and 567,092 deaths.
To see Kentucky’s full daily COVID-19 report, which includes such information as the red zone counties and red zone recommendations, testing locations, vaccine sites and availability, the weekly White House Coronavirus Task Force reports for Kentucky, executive orders, revised travel guidance from the CDC and other information on the state’s pandemic response, click here.
