Visitation allowed at some KY long-term care homes. 963 new COVID cases & 37 deaths.
Gov. Andy Beshear announced 963 new cases of COVID-19 in Kentucky on Thursday and 37 additional virus-related deaths, raising the state’s total number of confirmed cases to 392,729 and the death toll to 4,373.
The daily increase of new cases is the lowest reported on a Thursday since Oct. 8, Beshear said.
The statewide positivity rate, a seven-day rolling average, is back up to 7.07 percent. It’s an uptick the governor attributed directly to this week’s winter storms, which he said have curtailed the number of people venturing out to get tested.
At least 555,373 people across the state have received at least one dose of either the Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, according to the Kentucky Department for Public Health. Next week, the state expects to have a total of 291 vaccination sites, including six new regional sites in Albany, Cadiz, Campbellsville, Hartford, Marion and Maysville. The state expects to get nearly 88,000 more first-time doses next week.
One of the first populations to have a shot at a vaccine were residents and staff in long-term care facilities. There are only eight new positives among residents and 10 among staff in those places, Beshear said, attributing that dramatic drop in new cases over the last several weeks to widespread immunization. Now that the vast majority of staff and residents who wanted a vaccine have gotten one, Beshear on Thursday announced a restoration of outside visitation at some of those places.
In non-Medicare-certified facilities that have gone through the full vaccination process, indoor visitation, group activities among residents, and communal dining can resume, Beshear said. Non-Medicare facilities include assisted living, personal care homes and independent living facilities.
But relaxed visitation will still be limited. Each fully-vaccinated resident is only allowed one visitor, or no more than two visitors from the same household. Those visitors will have to show proof of vaccination, or provide a negative test result within the last 72 hours.
“Once someone is better protected from this disease, we want them to be able to see their loved ones,” Beshear said. The state is still awaiting federal permission to allow Medicare-certified nursing homes to follow suit.
The number of people hospitalized with coronavirus has steadily declined since mid January, following the post-holiday surge. On Thursday, there were 935 people hospitalized with COVID-19 (one more than Wednesday), 260 in intensive care (one more) and 130 on a ventilator (no change).
As the state continues to dig out from underneath the roughly 1.6 million unemployment insurance claims filed in 2020, Amy Cubbage, general counsel for the Kentucky Labor Cabinet, said Thursday that 90 percent of claims filed between March and Dec. 31 have been resolved. Eight percent of those claims were denied, while 82 percent were paid out, she said.
Of that remaining 10 percent, discounting the claims officials believe are fraudulent, roughly 45,000 credible claims are pending, Cubbage said. Most were filed in the last quarter of 2020.
This story was originally published February 18, 2021 at 4:40 PM.
