How many will coronavirus kill in Kentucky? Latest projection tops 800 by August.
The latest projection says Kentucky will have a total of 815 deaths by August from the novel coronavirus.
That is down from an earlier projection of 1,161 deaths that did not factor in closed schools limiting potential exposure to the virus. The projections from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington can change daily as researchers put additional data in the statistical model that produces the estimates.
The updated figures were available early Wednesday.
Of Kentucky’s seven border states, only Indiana and Ohio had a lower projected death rate per capita.
The projected deaths in Kentucky would be 0.018 percent of the state’s latest estimated population from mid-2019. The projected rate in Indiana and Ohio would be 0.016 percent.
The highest rate in any surrounding state would be Tennessee, where the projected 3,259 deaths would be 0.047 percent of the population.
All the states bordering Kentucky, with the exception of West Virginia, had a higher total number of projected deaths, but the percentages of people lost to the illness in Indiana and Ohio were lower because of their larger populations.
One piece of good news is that the analysis doesn’t project Kentucky will run short on hospital intensive care beds to treat severely ill people, unlike some surrounding states and the United States as a whole.
The report estimated that the peak need in Kentucky for hospital beds for COVID-19 patients will be on May 16, with a likely total of 1,561 beds. The state should have 6,210 beds available to handle that need, the report said.
The most likely peak number of needed intensive care unit beds will be 234, but the state should have 448 available, the analysis said.
Kentucky has a much higher number of hospital beds and ICU beds — 18,500 and 1,300, respectively — but many of those must be used for patients dealing with other normal medical emergencies.
The analysis projected a shortage of ICU beds in Illinois, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia at the peak of their COVID-19 cases.
The gap was biggest in Tennessee, with a projected shortfall of 1,672 ICU beds at the peak in mid-April.
For the United States, the analysis projected a shortfall of 84,671 hospital beds and 18,905 intensive-care unit beds on the peak demand day of April 15.
The numbers in the report are projections generated from a statistical model, using various data sources including death reports from the United States and other countries and data on hospital capacity and use.
That means the numbers keep changing as researchers get more data to plug into the model. In Kentucky, the projected number of deaths in the institute’s first report on March 26 was 585.
The coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force said the nationwide death projections from the institute square with its numbers, according to the Washington Post.
There also is a big range in the best and worst potential outcomes in the projections by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, again based on limitations in the data.
In Kentucky, for instance, the number of projected deaths by Aug. 4 ranged from a low of 158 to as many as 1,704.
In the U.S., the institute projected the likely number of deaths by Aug. 4 at 83,967, but the range was 36,614 to 152,582.
Christopher J.L. Murray, a professor and director of the institute, told the Washington Post that predicting the spread of coronavirus is as hard as predicting the weather.
“It’s going to be hard to predict this epidemic, and so the best we can do is just keep updating with the best information available at the point that different leaders are making decisions,” he said.
Ali Mokdad, a senior faculty member at the institute, said efforts to enforce social distancing measures to hold down the spread of the virus are critical.
“This is a pandemic that is spreading so fast,” he said.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear has taken a series of steps to limit public gatherings, including closing schools, shutting down most public-facing businesses and, as of Monday, limiting out-of-state travel.
The institute’s goal in coming up with the model was to forecast deaths and hospital use for the next four months so that health officials and others could plan for the expected increase in COVID-19 cases.
The model assumes that social distancing measures, such as closing nonessential services, remain in place through the end of May.
The findings mean that even with those measures in place, the peak demand for hospital services will likely outstrip capacity “substantially” in the country, the report said.
And that means there is an urgent need for measures such as restricting elective surgeries and increasing the capacity of health facilities, the report said.
Kentucky is among the states that are taking those measures.
In Kentucky, Beshear barred elective medical procedures, and the legislature approved a measure that would make many more health workers, including retired doctors, available to help treat people if needed.
Beshear said Monday that more than 600 medical and nursing students have volunteered to help during the pandemic. He also said the state is signing contracts with hotels and other facilities that could increase the number of hospital beds by at least 10 percent.
This story was originally published March 31, 2020 at 2:43 PM.
