Kentucky reports 3,869 new cases of coronavirus as hospital admissions keep growing
Gov. Andy Beshear announced 3,869 new cases of COVID-19 in Kentucky on Friday — 30% of which were in kids and teenagers ages 18 and younger.
Six new deaths were announced, as well as 34 previously unreported deaths, discovered through the state’s ongoing audit of death certificates.
Kentucky’s rate of people testing positive continues to climb to record heights, hitting 12.8% on Friday. The positivity rate is a leading indicator of how severe community spread is, and its day-over-day increase doesn’t bode well for the state’s hospital systems, which are already buckling under unprecedented demand.
Hospitals are admitting largely unvaccinated COVID-19 patients at a staggeringly high pace, higher even than before vaccines were available — a testament to how transmissible the Delta variant is. Hospitals have filled up quicker in the last seven weeks than they did in the last six months of 2020. Seventy-two more people were admitted to Kentucky hospitals between Thursday and Friday. Of the 1,780 total coronavirus patients, 487 are in intensive care units (an increase of six since Thursday) and 255 are on a ventilator (up 13).
In fewer than two months, Kentucky hospitals have admitted nearly 1,580 people with the virus, ballooning from 201 patients on July 1 to 1,780 on Friday — a more than 785% increase. For comparison, in 2020 when the virus first gripped the state, it took Kentucky roughly nine months — from around 230 hospitalizations in early April to the 1,817 peak in mid December — for the state to reach the same growth rate. The state is on track to set a new pandemic hospitalization record on Saturday.
This story was originally published August 20, 2021 at 5:37 PM.
