Louisville’s COVID-19 test positivity rate is again at an all-time high. Health officials said Tuesday that 27% of tests, representing a seven-day average from last week, returned positive results.
Case counts are also higher than ever.
“As of Sunday, we had added 10,000 just last week in the short holiday week putting us at 189.1 cases per 100,000 population,” the said Dr. Sarah Moyer, the city’s chief health strategist.
The city considers anything at or above 25 cases per 100,000 people to be “high spread.” The current rate is more than seven times that level.
Moyer said the city has reported nearly 2,000 new cases per day since Sunday. She expects next week’s case count will exceed 10,000.
As the number of cases continues to rise, Moyer said hospitals could soon begin to feel the effects.
“At this rate, it is very likely that our hospitals are gonna be in crisis mode, so beyond capacity, very soon, meaning critical and elective surgeries may have to be postponed,” Moyer said. “ And if you have COVID or a non-COVID emergency, might result in delayed care.”
While breakthrough cases are becoming more common, unvaccinated people continue to make up a majority of hospitalizations, both adults and children, she said.
“Norton Children’s yesterday had 16 kids that were hospitalized with COVID, all of them unvaccinated,” Moyer said.
While teenagers make up a majority of the children who are hospitalized, Moyer said that younger children are also being admitted for COVID-19 care.
“We do have some newborns, young kids, very young kids that are hospitalized, but their parents tended to have not been vaccinated for COVID,” Moyer said. “So please make sure anyone who is around your young children, who can’t get vaccinated, are vaccinated themselves before visiting.”
With more people testing positive, the wait times for monoclonal antibody treatments are increasing due to supply shortages and the fact that not all such treatments are effective against the omicron variant.
Moyer could not provide a specific timeline for when she thinks omicron will peak in Louisville but said that if measures are not taken to flatten the curve, numbers will continue to increase for the next three to four weeks.
Information on COVID-19 numbers, testing and vaccinations can be found on the city’s COVID-19 resource page.
