One year into the COVID-19 pandemic, the trends are improving in Kentucky
Saturday marks a year since the first official COVID-19 case was confirmed in Kentucky.
A year of loss and grief. Of missed milestones, postponed plans and agonizing isolation.
As the pandemic has unfolded, the Herald-Leader has tracked Kentucky’s COVID-19 data in a sprawling spreadsheet to monitor trends in new cases, hospitalizations and deaths.
There’s good news. Things are getting better.
“There are good reasons to be optimistic,” said Dr. Kraig Humbaugh, director of the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department. “I don’t know if we’re going to be in the clear, I think we’re going to approach another place, that hopefully will be in the summer, where COVID becomes something that we’re concerned about but that we can control in a much better way like other diseases we have.”
Here are some of the positive trends health departments in Kentucky are watching as Spring approaches.
Hospitalizations and ICU
Public health experts have emphasized restrictions to slow down the spread of COVID-19 in large part to make sure that hospitals aren’t overrun with cases. In the early days of the pandemic, New York City and other places were so overwhelmed with cases that volunteers from other parts of the country had to help relieve exhausted staffers.
“We’ve said all along that the reason we wanted to flatten the curve or lower the number the cases is not because we felt we could completely stop the epidemic, but we wanted to be able to give our residents the best chance at survival,” Humbaugh said.
Kentucky hit its peak in hospitalizations on December 17, when Beshear announced 1,817 Kentuckians were in the hospital with COVID-19. The number of people in the ICU hit its peak the day before, at 460 people. Hospitalizations and ICU cases remained high through the first few weeks of January — when new cases hit their peak — before beginning a rapid decline over the course of February and into March.
“What we’re seeing is a decrease, week upon week in hospitalizations, not only new admissions but current admissions of Lexington residents hospitalized for COVID-19,” Humbaugh said. “That was one of, probably, our key indicators.”
One of the biggest factors in reducing the number of people who were hospitalized or in the ICU has been vaccinations, according to Humbaugh and Cassie Prather, director of the Woodford County Health Department. By prioritizing long-term care facilities and people over 70, the vaccine has gone first to people who are most likely to face severe illness. Through February, 74 percent of Kentucky’s COVID-19 deaths were people older than 70.
While hospitalizations have fallen 63 percent from their peak in December, they still are at the same level as early October, before the state started entering a sharp increase in cases. There are still more than 600 people hospitalized with COVID-19, which is 300 more than there were in late April.
Incidence rate
New cases of COVID-19 in Kentucky have fallen for seven straight weeks. The state tracks incidence rates of the coronavirus in every county and considers more than 25 cases a day per 100,000 people to be “uncontrolled spread” that requires stricter restrictions.
All 120 counties in the state was red earlier this winter but that number has dwindled to less than 25.
The incidence rates of COVID-19 are decreasing among every age demographic.
The sharpest decline has been for people in their 80s, who had one of the highest incidence rates in the state through mid November and into December. Those rates began falling quickly as vaccine doses were distributed in long-term care facilities starting in mid-December.
The weekly incidence rate among people in their 80s was 100.5 cases per 100,000 people in the last week of February, down 86.6 percent from a peak of 748.5 cases per 100,000 in the first week of December.
“I think it was a good idea for the federal government to choose long-term care as well as health care workers to be the first group of folks that got offered the vaccine,” Humbaugh said.
Vaccinations
Three months into the state’s vaccination effort, already more Kentuckians have received at least the first dose of a coronavirus vaccine than have gotten COVID-19.
Still, the 760,585 Kentuckians who have received their first dose only make up 17 percent of the state’s population.
Since the state began reporting on February 3, Kentucky has given the first dose of a vaccine to an average of 12,927 people a day.
At the current rate, it would take about 286 days to get the first dose to the rest of the population of Kentucky, but it will likely go faster. In the past two weeks, the state has averaged 16,815 first doses a day and that number is expected to rise. The federal government has promised there will be enough doses of the vaccine to vaccinate every adult who wants it by May.
Getting people vaccinated is crucial to attaining the type of herd immunity that would allow life to look more like it did before the pandemic, Humbaugh said.
“More under control means we have a greater proportion of folks who are immune and the way to get there is to have a greater number of people vaccinated,” Humbaugh said.
Experts estimate the country would reach herd immunity if 75 percent of the population had either recovered from the virus or gotten the vaccine. A February analysis by the New York Times estimated that this threshold could be reached by July at the current pace and by May if the country is able to vaccinate 3 million people a day.
To even have three working vaccines at this stage of the pandemic is a marvel, Prather said. The Woodford County Health Department received its first doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine on Thursday. She touted a partnership between Johnson & Johnson and rival pharmaceutical company Merck to produce more doses of the vaccine.
“It’s a scientific miracle, really,” Prather said. “You’re seeing partners coalesce that are normally competitors.”
Deaths
The COVID-19 pandemic has already killed more than 500,000 Americans, a staggering amount in a single year.
In Kentucky, more than 4,700 people have died, with the highest number of announced deaths coming in late January and early February.
Because of the way Kentucky reports COVID-19 deaths — there is a panel that examines each death to make sure COVID-19 was truly the cause — there is a lag between when a death occurs and when it is officially counted by the state. While the state officially announced 754 deaths in the month of December, the Kentucky Department of Public Health said there were more than 1,000 deaths in December when responding to a February open records request.
Even with the lag in reporting, Kentucky’s death numbers have finally started to decrease.
“We are seeing fewer deaths and that’s probably a result of the fact that we’re seeing fewer cases,” Humbaugh said. “The percentage of COVID cases that result in death has remained about the same throughout the pandemic in Lexington.
There were 892 announced deaths in February, the second highest month in the pandemic, down from 1,083 announced deaths in January.
In prioritizing Kentuckians older than 70 for the vaccine, health experts are hoping to significantly decrease the number of people dying from the virus.
“With age being the tightest link to mortality, it’s promising,” Prather said.
This story was originally published March 5, 2021 at 11:46 AM.
