Clinton County’s COVID-19 cases continue to increase at a high rate as does cases across the Lake Cumberland 10 county health district, but officials here noted this week that perhaps we are seeing a flattening of the curve.

During the past week, since it’s report last Monday evening, the Lake Cumberland District Health Department reported that Clinton County had 11 new cases added to it’s count, while 12 cases during that same seven day period were removed from the current case count and reclassified as “recovered”.

With those figures in consideration, the LCDHD case count for Clinton County on Tuesday morning of this week stood at 11 cases, one of which was listed as being hospitalized.

Two new cases in Clinton County were added on five of the seven days last week.

One additional Clinton County is also listed as being hospitalized in the newest release of information from LCDHD Monday night, bringing the number of hospitalized patients from Clinton County suffering from COVID-19 to two.

The best day for our county totals came on Friday, when six cases were released on that single day, bringing the total number of cases at that point to 10.

Clinton County’s case numbers haven’t dipped into the single digit levels since August 6 when nine current cases were counted here.

Monday’s LCDHD brief also indicated an especially heavy day as far as new cases are concerned across the entire 10 county district, with 31 new cases being confirmed.

Russell County had the most new cases in Monday’s report with eight.

However, the positive trend of more cases being released than new cases being confirmed continued Monday for the fifth straight day.

In it’s daily information brief on Sunday, LCDHD spokesperson Amy Tomlinson, noted that the case totals for that day did have some promising areas.

“Today’s numbers are a mixed bag. On the plus, we have experienced no new deaths; and, we released 9 more cases as recovered than we added new cases. Our growth rate now projects that our total cases will double every 46.84 days, compared to about every 14 days just a few weeks ago,” Tomlinson said. “We are seeing a flattening of the curve.”

Monday’s case numbers included 31 new cases across the district with some 41 previous cases being released and moved to the “recovered” category.

As of Tuesday morning, Clinton County has had 52 total cases of COVID-19 since the pandemic began in Kentucky in March.

The county has experienced the death of one resident directly attributable to the virus, that being an 82 year-old female who passed away last week.

With some schools across the district making the decision to open before Governor Beshear’s suggested date of September 28 for in-person classroom instruction, Tomlinson also noted that officials were expecting to see a spike in cases soon.

“Over the next two to four weeks, if there is going to be a spike in cases (and we fully expect there will be) due to schools re-opening to in-person instruction, we should see that,” she warned. “Let’s hope and pray that our children can return to school safely without causing a spike in community cases.”

“Please help us slow the spread of COVID-19 by wearing your face covering, avoiding crowds (especially in confined spaces), social distancing when around others, increasing your hand hygiene, increasing your general sanitation, and by avoiding the touching of your face,” Tomlinson said.

Looking at Monday’s county by county case totals from the LCDHD report on that day (hospitalized cases in parenthesis), Pulaski County had the most cases with 44 (4); Taylor County with 29 (5); Russell County 22 (2); Green County 22 (0); Casey (2); Clinton 12 (2); Wayne (2); Adair 11 (1); Cumberland 11 (0).