On July 1, Kentucky reported 215 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19.
Nearly four weeks later, on Tuesday, the state recorded 1,273, including 215 in people under the age of 18.
The increase in positive cases in Kentucky is part of a nationwide trend that prompted the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to recommend on Tuesday that all people, regardless of vaccination status, wear masks again indoors in COVID-19 hot spots.
The federal agency also recommended that teachers, staff, and students be masked in schools, while also continuing to recommend that students return to in-person learning in the new school year, The Washington Post reported. Gov. Andy Beshear and state health officials made similar recommendations on Monday.
The return to recommendations that had become a part of everyday American life throughout much of the past year-plus due to the coronavirus follows mounting concerns over what has been called the delta variant of COVID-19. CDC Chief Rachel Walensky on Tuesday said, “The delta variant is showing every day its willingness to outsmart us and to be an opportunist in areas where we have not shown a fortified response against it,” according to The Post.
Nationally, the U.S. was recording roughly 13,000 positive cases per day at the beginning of July but cases have now quadrupled to 56,000 daily.
It is unclear how Northern Kentucky communities would be characterized under the updated mask recommendations, though according to state data, the daily case count is rising enough here that the incidence rate map now shows Campbell and Boone counties as “accelerated spread”, or orange, the second-highest rate of spread by the state’s standards. In Kentucky, the incidence rate is calculated by taking the average number of daily cases over a seven-day period per 100,000 population.
Campbell Co.’s incidence rate is 12.5 while Boone’s is 12.4.
Kenton Co. is classified as yellow, representing “community spread” with a rate of 7.9.
On Tuesday, the three counties reported a total of 63 new positive cases. On July 1, the three counties reported 15.
The state’s positivity rate is currently 8.1%, the result of 3,446 positive cases out of 42,502 tests over the past seven days.
On July 1, the positivity rate in Kentucky was 1.99%.
The arrival of COVID-19 vaccines in the U.S. was widely celebrated as a way out from the grips of a pandemic that shut down businesses and schools, led to people remaining indoors as much as possible, and shifted our everyday ways of life.
But following a surge in interest in vaccines as they first became available earlier in the year, fewer doses are being administered.
Only 51% of Kentucky’s population has received at least one dose of three vaccines.
Northern Kentucky counties are higher than the state average, with 59% in Boone, 57% in Campbell, and 55% in Kenton.
But the complexities presented by the delta variant, according to federal and state health officials, are increasing vulnerabilities for even the fully vaccinated population.
According to The Post:
Although the vaccines remain highly effective at preventing severe disease and death, they do not form an impenetrable shield. New data suggests that people who are vaccinated and have breakthrough infections from the delta variant may have as much viral load as a person who is unvaccinated, which suggests they may be able to spread it to others, Walensky said. Such transmission did not happen in any significant way with earlier versions of the virus.
The new recommendations substantially alter the agency’s May 13 guidance that vaccinated people did not need to wear masks indoors or outside because of the protection afforded by the coronavirus vaccines. At that time, cases were dropping sharply, and the delta variant, which is thought to be more than twice as transmissible as earlier versions of the virus, had not gained traction in the United States. That earlier guidance angered some people, including parents with young children ineligible for the vaccines, who feared that relaxed rules would put the vulnerable at greater risk.
-Michael Monks, editor & publisher
