Lexington reports 74 new COVID-19 cases. City on pace for record cases in August
Lexington reported 74 new COVID-19 cases Wednesday morning, bringing the city’s total to 4,676.
There was also one new death and five new hospitalizations reported, according to data from the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department. There were also 72 new recoveries reported. The health department has reported 3,724 people who are no longer infectious, which is a recovery rate of about 80 percent.
The death was a resident in their 80s, according to Kevin Hall, spokesman for the health department. The victim was not a nursing home resident, he said. There have now been 30 deaths among residents 75 or older, according to health department data. That makes up more than half of Lexington’s 52 total deaths.
Lexington has reported 1,421 cases this month. Lexington is less than 300 cases away from eclipsing the one-month high of 1,702 which was set in July. About 30 percent of all Lexington’s COVID-19 cases have come in the last 18 days, and about two-thirds of them have come since July 1, according to the health department. All of the city’s top five days of case increases have occurred in August.
There have been 72 hospitalizations this month, which is less than 40 short of last month’s 109 hospitalizations. Lexington has had 370 hospitalizations in total. The six deaths this month are on pace for Lexington’s fewest since May. The city had 16 deaths in June and 17 in July.
Recent case increases have included new cases from University of Kentucky students and inmates at the Lexington-Fayette County Detention Center. Since the pandemic first reached Lexington in March, 301 UK students have been counted in Fayette County’s cases. There were 40 cases in UK students newly-reported Wednesday morning.
Through its on-campus testing initiative, UK has reported 189 students who tested positive since Aug. 3. That number doesn’t include students who were tested elsewhere, such as a doctor’s office or another free testing site in Lexington. UK’s positivity rate for its student testing initiative was 1.1 percent as of Saturday, the most recent day of available data.
As of Monday, 72 Fayette County jail inmates and six employees had tested positive for the virus, according to Community Corrections. In total, 357 incarcerated people have tested positive for COVID-19 in Lexington. That includes 285 inmates at the Federal Medical Center on Leestown Road, which had an outbreak in the first few months of the pandemic.
This story was originally published August 19, 2020 at 9:10 AM.