Kentucky’s COVID-19 positivity rate has dropped below 9% this week, following an announcement by Gov. Andy Beshear last week the rate was at its highest in more than two months.
As of Tuesday, the state’s overall positivity rate was 8.79%. There were 2,559 new positive cases reported, following more than 4,000 combined between Saturday and Monday.
Beshear said the 1,089 case number reported Monday was lower than usual for that day of the week. He said it could have been due to reporting delays in certain areas following the deadly weekend tornadoes in Western Kentucky.
And although Kentucky’s COVID-19 cases have dropped slightly, hospital stays are still trending up.
“I do not have hospitals sounding the alarm yet, but everyone is watching this very, very closely,” Beshear said during the briefing.
There were 2,559 new cases reported Tuesday in Kentucky, with more than 650 those ages 5 to 17.
Around 2.7 million Kentuckians have received at least their first shot of a vaccine – nearly 210,000 of them were kids 12 to 17.
Jefferson County remains one of the more than 100 Kentucky counties in the red for COVID-19 spread with 38.5 cases per 100,000 residents. Anything 25 or above is considered red.
The Indiana Department of Health reported Tuesday 4,732 new cases and 87 new deaths. Of these, 67 cases were reported in Clark County and 54 cases in Floyd County, which also had one reported death due to the coronavirus.
The state’s positivity rate for all tests between Dec. 2 and 8 is 14.1%. Around 33% of the state’s hospitalizations are COVID-related.
