LOUISVILLE, Ky. — It's grim news for the bluegrass state, but an important reminder as we start to re-open. On Tuesday, the governor reported an additional 20 people have died in connection to COVID-19 in Kentucky. It's the highest one day death toll so far.
This graph shows the number of reported deaths in Kentucky starting in April, and following the next few weeks. The highest number of cases reported before Tuesday was 17 new deaths on April 21st. Now, Tuesday marks the all time high, with 20 new deaths reported. If you look at the bars before Tuesday, you can see how low the death rate had been for several days.
This graph may look familiar- the blue bars represents hospitalizations and the orange bars represent ICU patients- the dates are the bottom. This graph starts in mid-April, when the bluegrass state was at a high point in ICU and hospitalizations.
If you follow along you can see the state appears to level out through the end of April and into May. That was what state officials were looking for when they decided to start re-opening. But over the last several days there's been movement in the wrong direction, with both ICU cases and hospitalizations appearing to be on the rise.
The reason we watch those hospitalizations so closely is because that is how we can measure where we are compared to our health care system capacity. We know about 77-percent of the ICU beds within the Norton Healthcare system have patients in them. The aren't all COVID-19 positive patients but they are beds in use.
Its a reminder that as restaurants and retail start to re-open, there are still very sick people coming into the hospital.
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