KY switches to federal COVID-19 vaccination reporting system

LEXINGTON, Ky. (UPDATE) (WTVQ) – The state of Kentucky will now use the federal COVID-19 vaccination reporting system.

“It’s the database that every state and territory is using to enter data and pull data out to track our utilization of the vaccine the number of people we’ve vaccinated where they’ve been vaccinated”

Dr. Steven Stack says even though the state will be pulling from the federal data set it still won’t be able to exactly match what’s on the website due to different algorithms.

“This is a sprawling data base and its growing and improving consistently throughout this journey and so this is now making it possible for us to transition to federal data and create the dashboard you can see on your screen here” said Dr. Stack.

Governor Andy Beshear also announcing that within the daily reports, another new dashboard will show the top five and bottom five counties by vaccination.

He said in his briefing that the bottom five counties need to work harder.

“If you see your county listed here it means that it’s going to be less safe than other counties so I would hope that we could redouble efforts to get everybody out and vaccinated” said Governor Beshear.

He also encouraged healthy competition between the counties in the top five.

“I would like to see some healthy competition among our counties. If we look at the top five over there, there’s just three percent separating Woodford, Franklin and Fayette counties and I know everybody wants to have the largest percentage of people vaccinated because it means your counties are among the safest” said Beshear.

The new system and dashboard went live Monday afternoon.

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FRANKFORT, Ky. (Governors Office) – On Monday, Gov. Andy Beshear announced 1,833,652 people have received at least their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine in Kentucky.

The Governor said starting today, the state will transition to the federal COVID-19 vaccination reporting system.

“We’re also going to start showing on our daily report the top five counties with the highest vaccination rates, as well as our bottom five counties by vaccination rate,” said Gov. Beshear. “To our top five counties: Good job. Keep it up. There is still so much more to do. To our bottom five counties: Let’s work even harder because we want everybody to be protected.”

Kentuckians should visit vaccinemap.ky.gov to find a COVID-19 vaccination site near them.

The Governor pointed out five sites with the most available appointments per day:

• UofL Health, Cardinal Stadium Site, Jefferson County – register at uoflhealth.org or call 502-681-1435
• Owensboro Health Regional Hospital, Daviess County – register at owensborohealth.org/patient-visitor/schedule-an-appointment/covid-19-vaccination/
• St. Claire Healthcare, Morgan County – register by calling 606-783-7539
• Ohio County Healthcare, Ohio County – register at ochcares.com
• The Medical Center at Bowling Green, Warren County – register by texting COVID to 270-796-4400

Dr. Stack Updates Kentuckians on Data Reporting, Importance of Vaccinations
Dr. Steven Stack, commissioner of the Kentucky Department for Public Health, updated Kentuckians on COVID-19 testing and vaccination reporting and encouraged anyone who hasn’t signed up for a vaccination appointment yet to make the choice to do so.

Dr. Stack said as new labs onboard for electronic reporting, the state sometimes captures a substantial number of historic tests completed, resulting in one-time, higher-than-average increases in the number of Kentuckians tested for COVID-19 and number of Kentuckians who have tested positive for the virus.

Dr. Stack also said a new, online county level vaccine dashboard went live today at 4 p.m. EDT on kycovid19.ky.gov.

“Kentucky is performing very well on COVID-19 vaccinations relative to states in our region and the nation overall,” said Dr. Stack. “We’re outperforming every state south of us, from Texas to Florida. And, we are still outperforming five of our seven border states. But we can’t slow down. As countries like India and Brazil languish with thousands of deaths daily and collapsing health systems, it’s important that we not get complacent and that more people continue to make the choice to get vaccinated.”