Fayette County sets one-day COVID record with 451 new cases

LEXINGTON, Ky. (WTVQ) – If the coronavirus surge is flattening out, the numbers aren’t showing it in Fayette County.

Lexington reported a new one-day high Wednesday with 451 COVID-19 cases, bringing the total to 19,915 since the outbreak began in March. Three new deaths were reported, including two people in their 60s and one in their 80s. A total of 140 have died during the outbreak.

When asked if these numbers stem from Thanksgiving gatherings, Communications Officer with the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department Kevin Hall says yes.

“The Thanksgiving gatherings and the cases we were anticipating from that are most likely contributing to this today. If you look at the previous few days, we were lower. You can’t see that I put quotation marks around lower but believe me I was, because we were still over 200 cases but that was down 400, 300 cases we were seeing last week,” explained Hall.

Hall says they expected to see a sharp increase about 10 to 14 days after Thanksgiving. Thursday, Dec. 10 marks two weeks after the holiday.

According to the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department’s daily report Thursday morning, the county has confirmed 2,512 new cases and seven deaths through the first nine days of December.

That’s almost as many as all of August.

Hospitalizations from COVID-19 are also continuing to increase, with more than 100 Lexington cases currently hospitalized.

That’s more than three times the hospitalizations than in the summer. In total, 1,066 Lexington residents have been hospitalized from COVID-19 during the outbreak.

To help slow the spread of COVID-19, follow these guidelines:
• Wear a cloth face-covering in public
• Avoid close contact with others
• Wash your hands often
• Stay home if you are sick.

Lexington’s COVID-19 numbers, including charts with demographics, hospitalizations and more, are updated Monday-Saturday at lfchd.org.

• 110, March
• 143, April
• 507, May
• 793, June
• 1,702 July
• 2,538, August
• 2,804, September
• 2,736, October
• 6,070, November

The county reached the following thousand-case marks on these dates:

• 19,000: Dec. 6
• 18,000: Dec. 2
• 17,000: Nov. 28
• 16,000: Nov. 24
• 15,000: Nov. 20
• 14,000: Nov. 16
• 13,000: Nov. 11
• 12,000: Nov. 5
• 11,000: Oct. 29
• 10,000: Oct. 20
• 9,000: Oct. 6
• 8,000: Sept. 22
• 7,000: Sept. 11
• 6,000: Sept. 2
• 5,000: Aug. 23
• 4,000: Aug. 10
• 3,000: July 28
• 2,000: July 12
• 1,000: June 10
• 1: March 8