This week we will reach a milestone of 800,000 reported new cases of Covid-19 in Kentucky. All public health experts agree that this is a substantial undercount. Despite that there were 5 days of undercounting new cases over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, and that a rolling average is by definition always hostage to its earliest days, the 7-Day average of new reported KY cases has been rising in an unrelenting fashion since November 5th.
However, our epidemic expansion began weeks before that. For each given weekday (i.e. a Wednesday) the most recent daily count for that day of the week has been higher than the that of the previous 7 to 9 weeks. Last week’s total new case count exceeded by far that of the previous 8 weeks reaching 52% of the highest weekly count of any week during the 628 days since Covid-19 was recognized in Kentucky. The most recent upward trajectory of new each new daily case count has been steep.
Other indicators of epidemic expansion are consistent with this increase in daily new case counts. The number of new cases tracks very closely with the Covid Test Positivity Rate (TPR) whether calculated daily, or using the KY Department of Public Health’s indicator of the 7-Day average of percent of tests reported electronically that are positive. The current “official” positivity rate has been above 9% for the past few days. (The maximum reported rate of 14.2% occurred as recently as last September 8th.) The TPR has been rising sharply. The 7-Day new case rate is surging past that of the 14-Day rate also indicating rapid expansion. The current gap between the two of 463 cases is the highest so far in the course of Kentucky’s epidemic. Cases plotted semi-logarithmically reveal our current expansion of both cases and the TPR to be formally exponential, albeit at a doubling rate of around 4 weeks.
Continue reading “Kentucky’s Covid-19 Epidemic Expanded Relentlessly During Past Two Months.”