By Tom Latek
Kentucky Today
Once again, the weekly figures released by the Kentucky Department for Public Health indicate the COVID-19 pandemic is not waning, as deaths, hospitalizations, new cases, and the state’s positivity rate continue to show increases.
Sixty-two more deaths were reported for the seven-day period ending July 11. That compares to 38 during the previous week, and 30 the week before that. There have now been 16,244 COVID-related deaths in Kentucky since the start of the pandemic.
The state’s positivity rate jumped by more than a full percent in this latest report to 16.96%. That compares to 15.75% last week and 13.36% two weeks ago, but Gov. Andy Beshear noted the higher positivity rate could be misleading.
“With home testing, there are a lot of results that aren’t reported, making this a more challenging statistic,” he said. “These are only the PCR tests administered by professionals, and people only go in for one of those when they really need to. There is more COVID out there, but it would be really tough to compare it to delta, apples to apples. Delta is much deadlier than omicron.”
A total of 10,949 new cases were reported to the Kentucky Department for Public Health, on the July 11 report. That is up from 10,191 the previous week and means we have now had 1,419,862 in Kentucky since the first positive case appeared on March 6, 2020.
Thirty counties each had 100 or more new cases during the past seven days. The top ten were: Jefferson with 1,893, Fayette 779, Hardin 382, Daviess 335, Kenton 307, Boone 298, Warren 252, Madison 206, Pike 172, and Campbell 171.
The hospital census also saw an across-the-board increase during the past week. 483 people were hospitalized. Of them, 72 were in the ICU and 28 on a ventilator. A week earlier, the numbers were 405, 49, and 23, respectively.
According to Dr. Jeff Howard, interim director of the Louisville Metro Department of Public Health and Wellness, “Wastewater testing shows that the omicron BA.5 variant is now the dominant strain of COVID-19 in Louisville. It is more infectious than the previous omicron variants.”
Although the BA.5 variant, which now consists of 54% of cases nationwide, results in milder cases for the most part, Howard adds, “COVID-19 vaccines continue to be the best tool to protect us from severe illness.”
For more details and guidance, go to the state’s COVID-19 website, http://kycovid19.ky.gov/.