Covid-19 Infection Spreading Essentially Unimpeded in Kentucky.

Both Test Positivity Rates and Overall Incidence Rate of new infections are still expanding exponentially statewide. As quantitated by Current Incidence Rates per10K population 91 Kentucky counties are “in the red” with 118 of our 120 counties either in the “High” or “Substantial” categories. There are no green counties anymore! The most recent Test Positivity and overall Case Incidence Rates are 17.0% and 34.0% respectively. Both are dramatically higher than their nadirs in early April following the massive winter Omicron surge and continue to rise relentlessly and exponentially. Hospitalizations, ICU utilization and deaths are rising, albeit at a much lower rates.

Other data that can be extracted from this week’s report show that PCR testing is not increasing but identify an increasing proportion of new cases, currently 74% of new cases. (Clearly we are missing many more cases.) New infections in individuals 18 years old or younger remain relatively low at 14% but these still vulnerable citizens are out of school and not being tested as frequently. (This rate may go up as pre-athletic physical exams for fall sports are ramped up.)

As is happening nationally, indeed worldwide, Kentucky’s surge in cases is likely due to the B-4 viral descendant of the first Omicron strain and cases should be assumed to be grossly undercounted. In my experience, there is little evidence that the public in general is following standard public health practices to mitigate against the social, economic, and physical morbidity of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19 infection. The ability of state public health departments and their governments to make meaningful differences in outcomes has been critically obstructed. As a community we appear to have wished away the epidemic, but it is still with us for an unknown and unpredictable future.

In technical medical terms, I see SARS-CoV-2 running wild in Kentucky! We are in the middle of a social experiment to see what happens when we let it all hang out in a community “chickenpox party.” I do not think we will need statistics to see what happens.

Peter Hasselbacher, MD
Emeritus Professor of Medicine, UofL
14 July 2022

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Kentucky’s Covid-19 Epidemic Still Expanding Rapidly

The intervening Fourth of July Holiday and another bump in the road about how cases were counted made the number of new cases reported less indictive of the actual state of Kentucky’s epidemic expansion. The July 4th report of Test Positivity of 15.75% is the highest since mid-February with a string of uninterrupted increases since April 11. Similarly, the Overall Statewide Incidence Rate is also at a new peak of 30.8 new cases per 100K population. Both these previously reliable indicators continue to rise at an exponential rate.


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Covid-19 Epidemic Still Expanding in KY With Hospital Utilization Increasing.

New reported weekly cases of Covid-19 continue to increase sharply. Yesterday’s new case count of 13,947 is the highest yet since the new less-aggressive case reporting system was put into place in early March and is nearly double the number of two weeks before.  This much lower than the January Omicron peak of some 80,000 weekly or the Delta peak last fall of 30,000.  However, the number of new cases reported currently is undoubtedly a considerable undercount due to changes in case identification and reporting protocols.

New weekly cases Covid-19 in KY reported 6-13-22. Assume an undercount.

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Spring Surge of Covid-19 in Kentucky Expanding Exponentially

Fourteen weeks ago Kentucky’s Department of Public Health switched from daily Covid-19 updates to weekly reports, including to the CDC. Additional changes were made as to what categories of cases and tests would be reportable. These changes were made in early March, 2022 when the Commonwealth was largely recovered from the Omicron wave that peaked in late January but had not yet descended below the levels of cases, hospitalizations, or deaths occurring in the interval between the Delta and Omicron variants in early November. These three weekly metrics continued to fall until early last April when it has become clear that Coronavirus infections in Kentucky were on the rise again, indeed, in an exponential fashion. 

Spring Surge of 2022:
Beginning in early to mid-April, the Test Positivity Rate (TPR) and Overall Incidence Rate per 100K Population (OIR) began to rise progressively thus enabling the subsequent surge of new cases beginning in early May that has continued through the last report of June 6th. Last week’s TPR is higher than that of the previous 13 weeks, as is the OIR. The weekly new case count is higher than any of the previous 12 weeks. Since the nadirs of these three metrics of disease activity, all three have been doubling exponentially every three weeks.


TPR correlated closely with cases the entirety of the KY epidemic.

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