FRANKFORT, Ky. (LEX 18) — COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths have been consistently decreasing over the last few weeks and state health officials say it looks promising.
"Last summer, we got to a nice calm spot, felt like we were heading back to normal life. Feels very much like that as spring dawns and we start to have some of the warmer weather," said Dr. Steven Stack, Department for Public Health Commissioner, during Monday's COVID briefing
But with so many counties across Kentucky still in the red, a lot of people are wondering why and what it will take to change that.
Stack says as of last week, Kentucky started following the CDC's new COVID-19 community spread map, which looks at three metrics to determine if an area is in the high, medium, or low COVID spread: new COVID-19 cases per 100 thousand people, new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100 thousand people and percent of staffed inpatient beds occupied by COVID-19 patients over the course of seven days.
The new metrics will also be updated weekly instead of daily. So to find out if your county's situation has changed, you'll check on Friday morning instead of day by day.
Governor Andy Beshear says he expects a lot of counties in the red to turn yellow within the next week.
"Certainly, by the beginning of next week is when we always anticipated for things to be much better. Within two weeks, I think we would anticipate the vast majority of the map being yellow," said Beshear.
