48 COVID-19 cases in Christian County, seven hospitalized

Christian County now has 48 confirmed COVID-19 cases and seven of those patients are hospitalized at Jennie Stuart Medical Center.

Amanda Sweeney says one case is pediatric, 20 are young adults between 22 and 59-years old, 13 are older adults and there are three cases in the elderly age group over 85 years of age. That total is up only one from Monday to Tuesday. Eleven people have recovered from the illness.

Of the seven patients in the hospital, three are on ventilators, according to Beth McCraw of Jennie Stuart Health, who says they are working closely with officials at Western State Hospital Hospital.

There are nine patients showing COVID-19 type symptoms at Jennie Stuart who are awaiting test results and at least one of those individuals is on a ventilator.  McCraw says they have received all the pending test results back from LabCorps, so they are caught up on their backlog of tests.

Public Health Director Kayla Bebout says it’s hard to predict when Christian County’s cases will peak, but it could be in about a month.

Jennie Stuart CEO Eric Lee says the hospital is in better shape than many with their supply of personal protective equipment, but that has been made even more so by the generosity of the community.

Sweeney reiterated a recent public health order during the regular Tuesday afternoon briefing, noting that while essential businesses are required to limit customers to one person per family, there are exceptions for parents who don’t have access to other child care options and for seniors who need help shopping.

Getting back to some semblance of normal is what everyone wants and Sweeney says the better we all work on social distancing efforts, the quicker that day will come.