New COVID cases tick up in Kentucky ahead of expiration of US emergency declaration

Starting Thursday, Kentuckians will lose access to several key measures they’ve relied upon throughout the pandemic to assess their personal risk of exposure to COVID-19, along with its overall affect on their communities.

This is because the dual national and public health emergency declarations for COVID-19 are set to expire, meaning going forward, publicly available data tracking coronavirus pandemic trends will be even harder to come by.

“The ending of the emergency will mean that there is less information day to day or week to week,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear explained during his regular weekly news conference Thursday.

Top brass at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have echoed a similar message.

“Although next week marks the end of the public health emergency, it is not the end of COVID-19,” Dr. Nirav Shah, the CDC’s principal deputy director, said during a call with reporters Thursday, as reported by ABC News. “COVID-19 remains a risk and CDC remains committed to preventing severe illness and death associated with COVID-19, particularly for those who are at higher risk.”

Nirav said the CDC will continue to monitor the pandemic “through a multitude of metrics.”

For now, here’s where things stand in Kentucky, and what will change going forward.

How will the CDC change its COVID-19 data reporting?

Thursday, Beshear announced several measures the CDC reports, including transmission data, national immunization data and COVID-19 community levels, will soon become unavailable.

The CDC will discontinue its COVID-19 transmission and community level maps because it will no longer have the state-level data it needs to make the measures accurate and complete. With the upcoming phase out of the national public health emergency, states will no longer be required to report certain data points to the CDC, such as their immunization rates.

Other public health measures, including hospital data related to COVID-19 admissions, will only be reported weekly, Beshear said.

The governor framed the change as “natural” given the pandemic has largely diminished to a more manageable level.

“We are in a much better place and I know everybody is excited about that,” Beshear said Thursday.

Still, the pandemic isn’t over. Hundreds of people in the U.S. continue to die from the disease each week, and as most Americans move on, people are still suffering from long COVID. Not to mention the lingering consequences of unequal vaccine access in the global south, but particularly in Africa, where a fifth of the world’s population lives, according to reporting from the New York Times.

What about COVID-19 in Kentucky and Fayette County?

For the first time in several weeks, not a single county in Kentucky is reporting an elevated community level of COVID-19.

In the latest update from the CDC Thursday, all counties reported low COVID-19 community levels, a metric the agency uses to gauge the affect the virus is having locally and to inform public health guidance.

The community levels are based on weekly totals of new infections and hospital admissions, along with weekly averages of COVID-occupied hospital beds.

In counties at high, federal officials recommend wearing a mask in public places.

Also in the latest CDC update Thursday, Kentucky reported 1,235 new cases, a slight uptick from where the commonwealth stood the previous week.

When it comes to Fayette County, the CDC reports a case rate of 27.54 per 100,000 people. That’s an increase of roughly 12% from where the rate stood the previous reporting week, but the federal health agency still classifies the community level as low.

A total of 89 additional cases were reported in Fayette County as of May 3. That’s an increase from the 68 new cases previously reported.

For its part, the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department reported 86 additional cases and one new death between April 22 and 28, the latest data available on its Facebook page.

To find a COVID-19 vaccine near you, visit vaccines.gov.

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