Kentucky’s COVID-19 positivity rate hits double digits again as tests become scarce
Kentucky’s COVID-19 positivity rate, a leading indicator of community spread, is again in the double digits as the state braces for an omicron surge, Gov. Andy Beshear said Monday.
In the last week, the rate of Kentuckians testing positive jumped from 9.06% on Sunday, December 19 to 11.35% on December 26. By Monday, it was at 11.8%.
Last week, the state reported 249 COVID-19 deaths. On Sunday and Monday, the state reported 39 deaths and 2,323 new cases. For the last three weeks, the number of new cases every seven days has leveled off, though that plateau is still “too high,” Beshear said in a news update. Coronavirus-related hospitalizations, likewise, are “holding steady,” he said. “We are not hearing the sounds of alarm yet in hospitals across Kentucky.”
“Where we are in terms of cases right now is pretty stable,” the governor said. When omicron hits, though, “it will increase those numbers precipitously in a much smaller time period than delta.”
But the state’s positivity rate appears to already be rising precipitously, portending a potential spike in cases and hospitalizations. Beshear said it’s not yet clear if that lurch is expressly due to omicron, though “part of it has got to be omicron.”
In response to the rapid spread of omicron, coronavirus testing supply cannot keep up with the exploding demand. Last week in Kentucky, the state logged a 10% increase in tests, likely due to the heightened chance for spread over the holidays. On the Monday before Christmas, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the number of omicron cases showed a seven-fold increase in just seven days. Even before Christmas, the number of omicron infections in some parts of the world appeared to be doubling every 1.5-to-three days.
Indoor holiday get-togethers will only prove to exacerbate that skyrocketing level of spread in the coming days, experts agree, but there’s no immediate solution to the testing shortage. The half a billion at-home tests the Biden Administration said it plans to produce won’t become available until later in January. Meanwhile on Monday in Lexington, hundreds of people waited in an hours-long line of cars for a test administered by Wild Health near Kroger Field on the University of Kentucky’s campus.
The company’s testing demand has grown two-to-three times larger in recent days, according to Wild Health’s Dr. Luke Murray. “Our appointments are totally booked and it happened in a matter of (two to three) days,” he said. “We have expanded hours until as late as 10 p.m. and expanded our staffing to meet demand.”
Omicron is highly contagious, and because of that, experts warn that case spikes from the newest variant are inevitable. With that as an active threat, Beshear urged universal masking in workplaces and in schools, urging school districts specifically to “set up a program where you can test as many kids before they come back.”
Additionally, “you’ve got to have universal masking in schools,” he said. “I get that there’s pressure and some folks out there might not like it, but it’s basic science.”
Over the next year, Kentuckians should normalize getting testing regularly before gathering in groups. “I think a lot of this next year is going to be using rapid tests just to make sure you’re a little bit safer,” he said.
Roughly 54% of the state population is fully vaccinated, and 19% have received booster doses, according to the Kentucky Department for Public Health. Over the weekend, 11,071 people got a first dose and 35,396 people got a booster.
This story was originally published December 27, 2021 at 5:04 PM.
