COVID-19 cases continued to spike in Clinton County, as well across Kentucky and much of the country over the past week, as officials scrambled to find ways to close down the spread of the virus.

In Clinton County, new cases were reported here by the Lake Cumberland District Health Department several times during the past week, according to the agency’s daily Public Information Brief press releases.

With six active cases beginning last week, Clinton County’s case numbers increased on five different days during the past week, with six new cases being added and eventually seeing a total of eight current cases on Monday evening of this week, according to the daily brief case counts.

Monday’s new case, a 44 year-old female who was self isolated, was the county’s 21st case of COVID-19 since the LCDHD began keeping up with cases when the pandemic first reached Kentucky back in March.

Among those new cases, two cases were listed as being hospitalized at one point late last week, when the active case total for Clinton County was 10 on Friday.

In the days following that report, both cases were eventually removed from the “hospitalized” category, however, on Sunday, no new cases for Clinton County were listed, but one of the earlier afore mentioned cases had been re-classified as being “hospitalized”.

Prior to Monday’s newest announced case here, the five new cases in Clinton County last week ranged in age from a 50 year-old female who was self-isolated, to two cases involving females in their 80s, one of which was hospitalized and one self-isolated.

Last week was also an especially bad week, case wise, for neighboring Cumberland County, with some 15 new cases of the virus being reported there.

By Monday’s report, Cumberland County had some 16 active cases of COVID-19, all of which were self-isolated.

Another hot spot this week was Pulaski County, which saw 58 new cases being reported in a one-week stretch.

By Monday’s report, Pulaski had 66 current cases, 64 of which were self-isolated and two hospitalized, making it the highest case count in the LCHDH 10 county district area.

Other counties and case counts were: Casey, 51; Adair, 23; Taylor, 23; Russell, 19; Wayne, 15; McCreary, 7; Green, 2.

Monday’s LCDHD information brief also brought the news that the virus had spread through the agency’s own office in Casey County, where the brief reported a “cluster” there, causing the closing of that office until at least the rest of the week.

It was the first health department office in the district to have faced a closure due to the pandemic.

In it’s Monday brief release, the public was reminded that strict measures should continue to be taken in efforts to slow down the spread of the virus.

Referring to the outbreak within the Casey County Health Department Office, LCDHD spokesperson Amy Tomlinson pointed out that it was of particular concern that the virus could spread through an environment such as that.

“This goes to show how easily this virus can spread, even in an environment where the staff were hyper-vigilant in following the guidance,” Tomlinson said. “Therefore, it extremely important you do everything you can to reduce your risk. Everyone should continue wearing their face coverings, avoiding crowds, social distancing, washing their hands frequently, increasing sanitation, and avoiding the touching of their faces.”

Although the case numbers across Kentucky continued to rise steadily throughout the week, prompting Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear to place new restrictions on the public Monday afternoon, case counts across the 10 county LCDHD area, appeared to remain somewhat level during the past seven days.

Case numbers across the district hovered around the level of about 230 cases, with new cases and cases removed due to being released, or recovered, equaling each other out.

Gov. Beshear tightens restrictions

In an effort to once again get a better grip on the spread of the COVID-19 spread across Kentucky, Governor Andy Beshear announced that he was instituting additional restrictions on Monday.

Those restrictions included suggesting that all public and private schools in Kentucky, not hold in-person class until at least the third week of August, which would begin on August 24.

An additional article concerning the opening of Clinton County Schools appears this week in the Clinton County News, beginning on page 1.

The Governor also announced that restaurants will be limited to 25 percent of per-pandemic capacity indoors, with outdoor accommodations remaining limited only by the ability to provide proper social distancing.

““On restaurants, again, they can do unlimited outdoor seating as long as they can sufficiently spread guests out under social distancing guidelines, and we are going to work with our cities and localities to do what we need to do administratively to allow that outside seating to expand,” Beshear said Monday in a press release issued that afternoon. “This is going to hurt a lot of restaurants. But the White House modeling shows that this is absolutely necessary to control the spread at this time when we either become the next Florida, or we get it under control and save the lives of our people and protect our economy.”

Gov. Beshear said his new recommendation for schools is the only path toward getting, eventually, back to in-person instruction.

“By waiting until the third week of August, we believe it gives us a chance to get this thing under better control, to get more people wearing that facial covering and to get us in a place where we can handle this in a much better way,” said Gov. Beshear. “My concern is if schools start before this, we’ll see cases in schools. And if we see a lot of early cases in schools, it will be harder to get all of our schools open for in-person classes in some way that works for those families.”