College students make up almost half of Lexington’s new COVID-19 cases

Lexington reported 83 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, with almost half of the cases being infected college students.

There were no new deaths, according to the Lexington Fayette-County Health Department. The city has recorded 72 deaths, 512 hospitalizations and 8,014 total COVID-19 infections since March.

Forty of the new cases reported Wednesday were from university or college students in Fayette County. Health department data now does not specify which institution the students attend. On Tuesday, the department confirmed the county’s first hospitalized college students, but the department did not give an exact number, only reporting that there has been less than five.

This story will be updated.

This story was originally published September 23, 2020 at 9:43 AM.

Rick Childress

Lexington Herald-Leader

502-219-6483

Rick Childress covers Eastern Kentucky for the Herald-Leader. The Lexington native and University of Kentucky graduate first joined the paper in 2016 as an agate desk clerk in the sports section and in 2020 covered higher education during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. He spent much of 2021 covering news and sports for the Klamath Falls Herald and News in rural southern Oregon before returning to Kentucky in 2022.