Kentucky had its first cases of a more transmissible strain of COVID-19 and Governor Andy Beshear gave an update on that while reporting 2,424 new cases.
Governor Beshear says they were preparing for this possibility and have been keeping an eye out for the United Kingdom variant of the virus in COVID-19 testing. The governor says although the risk of spread is still high, there are trends across the nation that the virus is possibly in decline.
He says a reliable supply of vaccines remains an issue, but they’re working hard to get more to the state and then to Kentuckians as fast as possible. He says they will be receiving approximately 8,800 additional first doses each week.
Public Health Commissioner Dr. Steven Stack says the new variant is more easily transmissible but not necessarily more lethal–however, he says if more people catch it, then the number of those who could get very sick or even die would rise as well.
He says fast vaccine rollout is more important than ever, to beat the virus before it’s able to mutate further into more variants. The positivity rate is now at 9.53 percent, continuing to decrease, and the governor reported 47 new deaths in the Commonwealth.