‘Shaping up to be a brutal month.’ Lexington has one of its worst COVID-19 weeks yet
The pandemic is showing no sign of letup in Lexington through the first 10 days of January.
The city reported 384 new COVID-19 cases over the weekend, 181 of them from Saturday and 203 from Sunday. There were also 15 new hospitalizations and one new death reported by the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department.
Lexington’s new COVID-19 cases over the past seven days were the third-most in a single week (1,697). The city also reported its fourth-most hospitalizations in a single week (85). At its current pace in January, Lexington is on track to set a new one-month record for cases.
“This is already shaping up to be a brutal month in Fayette County,” Lexington health department spokesman Kevin Hall said. “This is not the time to get relaxed about wearing a mask, staying physically distant or any of the other guidelines.”
Lexington has reported 25,625 cases and 167 deaths since the pandemic first reached the city in March.
Lexington’s COVID-19 spread has more than doubled in the past two weeks. The rolling seven-day average of new cases on Dec. 27 was 110. It spiked as high as 263.9 as of Friday and was 242.4 as of Monday morning. Lexington has already reported more than 2,200 new coronavirus cases in January, which is more than the number reported for all of July.
Fayette County’s incidence rate has climbed back into the 70s after dipping as low as 33.2 in late December, according to the state Department for Public Health. The incidence rate is a method for measuring the severity of COVID-19 spread based on population size in each Kentucky county.
The state calculates incidence rate by taking each county’s rolling seven-day average and dividing it by the county’s total population. That number is then multiplied by 100,000 to find the number of cases per day per 100,000 residents.
Lexington residents in their 20s and 30s have made up the majority of coronavirus cases since the pandemic first reached Lexington in March. There have been 4,955 confirmed cases among residents aged 25 to 34, which is the most among any age range specified by the health department. The second-highest number is 4,273 among 20 to 24-year-olds.
Lexington residents 75 and older only account for about 4.5 percent of cases, but also account for about 26.3 percent of all hospitalizations and about 62.6 percent of all deaths.
Variants of the COVID-19 virus are beginning to emerge in countries around the world, and Gov. Andy Beshear on Friday said it’s likely that the United States has its own variant of the virus which could be 50 percent more transmissible.
Beshear said the White House Coronavirus Task Force believes there’s a potential variant because of how significant COVID-19 spread has become in the United States.
But despite a major increase in cases locally in recent weeks, Hall said the city is “not currently aware of any variants being present.”
This story was originally published January 11, 2021 at 9:33 AM.