Some good news? Fayette County reports only one new COVID-19 case, no deaths Monday
The Lexington-Fayette County Health Department reported Monday only one new COVID-19 case, bringing the total number of cases in Fayette County to 205.
No new deaths were reported. The health department has not reported a death due to the respiratory illness in Kentucky’s second-largest county since April 7.
Kevin Hall, a spokesman for the health department, said many of the testing labs were closed over the Easter weekend, resulting in the low number of test results. It’s still too soon to say if the number of new infections is slowing, he said.
“We expect to see more cases as the week goes along to make up for the delay in testing and receiving results,” Hall said.
To date, seven people from Fayette County have died from complications caused by the novel coronavirus.
That’s much less than Jefferson County, Kentucky’s most populous county, which has been hit hard by the pandemic. On Monday, Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer reported 45 deaths there and 569 positive COVID-19 cases.
Tracking deaths has been tricky for both Fayette and Jefferson counties. Both have several major hospitals treating COVID-19 patients from across the state. Deaths that occur in Lexington and Louisville hospitals have sometimes been attributed to Fayette or Jefferson counties when the patient is from another Kentucky county.
Both counties have had to tweak death and case numbers over the past four weeks due to mix-ups about a patient’s home county.
Fayette County health department data released Monday shows the vast majority — 61 percent — of the 205 patients that have tested positive for the virus have recovered. About 19 percent of those patients have had to be hospitalized.
This story was originally published April 13, 2020 at 3:01 PM.
