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Last week, Kentucky had the highest new cases reported daily | Data Deep Dive

More than a month after masking up, new case trends in Kentucky show signs of steadying -- but leveling at high rates.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Governor Beshear said he believes while cases are still going up, Kentuckians have stopped the exponential growth of the virus by taking precautions like hand washing and wearing masks.

Our FOCUS team has created two graphs to take a closer look at the numbers to see if that claim is true.

Credit: FOCUS Investigates

The graph above shows the increase in cases reported daily since the first case back in March. 

The dotted line is the 14-day moving average which shows us if the trend is going up or down or plateauing. 

You can see the trend was going up and going up fast at the end of July. 

We've marked July 10, the day the mask mandate started, in orange.

Notice the dotted line starts to level out at the end of the last week a possible indication.

On the far right, the last few days we've seen the new cases reported daily start to stair-step down. That's a good sign.

However, a closer look at weekly averages shows last week Kentucky saw the greatest case growth since the mask mandate.

Credit: FOCUS Investigates

Each bar shows the average number of new cases reported daily Monday to Sunday for each week.

We've marked the week the mask mandate started in orange.

In conclusion, it appears we are plateauing but we're leveling out at a higher rate than the early months of the pandemic.

We'll be watching to see if the decrease in new cases reported daily continues long enough to start to drive that trend line down. 

Reminder, some labs are able to provide results a day after a patient takes a test while other labs can take up to 10 days to report results; that is why we always say this data is not reflective of how the virus is currently spreading but gives us a glimpse into how the virus was spreading days or weeks ago.

Without the dates in which the tests were taken it is tough to decide if the mask mandate is what is driving the trends. Experts also point out that not everyone wears a mask or wears it properly contributing the reasons cause and effect of the mask up efforts are hard to determine. 

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