‘An outlier.’ Lexington has single-day COVID-19 spike with 133 new cases
Lexington saw a spike in COVID-19 cases Thursday, with 133 new cases reported Friday morning.
It was the most new cases the city has reported in a single day since Sept. 11, which was the day Lexington set its new case record at 167. Friday was only the second time Lexington reported 100-plus cases so far in October.
“Today is definitely an outlier from recent reporting, and it’s one of the reasons to look at the 7-day average to get a better idea of where we are at a given time,” said Kevin Hall, a Lexington-Fayette County Health Department spokesman.
Lexington’s new cases have hit a plateau in October, Hall said previously, despite the state as a whole trending higher. The rolling seven-day average for Lexington as of Friday was about 62.3 cases. That’s lower than it had been at any point in September despite including two days of more than 100 cases.
But the health department would like case counts to drop further.
“It’s higher than previous plateaus, so we need the people of Central Kentucky to continue following the public health guidelines to slow the spread of COVID-19,” Hall said previously.
There were 21 new University of Kentucky student cases reported Friday morning. UK student cases have declined in recent weeks, a large reason for new cases trending lower in Lexington. As of Friday morning’s report, there had been 48 new UK student cases for the week. Students were previously accounting for as many as 348 cases in a single week.
Lexington also reported one new death and three new hospitalizations on Friday. The city has had 9,722 cases, 86 deaths and 592 hospitalizations since March.
New cases have steadily decreased over the past month, aside from single-day spikes. But hospitalizations and deaths haven’t followed the same trend. New deaths and hospitalizations this week are already higher than they were last week, and the weekend is likely to bring more of both.
This story was originally published October 16, 2020 at 10:38 AM.