Clinton County’s COVID-19 case numbers took a turn for the worse again in the past week, reaching a level that once again moved the county into the worst level of current incidence rates.

On Friday of last week, after seven new cases were announced among county residents in that single day, Clinton County’s seven day incident rate went above the rate of 25 new cases on average per day per 100,000 population.

By Sunday of this week, the Incident Rate for Clinton County was at 32.2 and as of Tuesday morning, the case rate had increased slightly, with the two new cases that were added Monday night putting the rate at 32.6

Clinton County was one of two counties within the Lake Cumberland District Health Department’s 10 county region to have reached the critical category this week, with McCreary County also surpassing the Critical Incident Rate base with 28.2 cases per day as of Tuesday morning.

Clinton County’s two most recently announced cases, added in Monday’s LCDHD Public Information Brief press release, included a 16 year-old male who was asymptomatic and a 22 year-old male who was symptomatic. Both were self-isolated.

A look back at cases added to Clinton County just 24 hours before, on Sunday’s case release, proves that the disease is infecting residents of all ages, with the two added cases in that instance being a 75 year-old female and a 69 year old female.

As of Tuesday morning, Clinton County was listed as having 28 current cases of COVID-19 among its residents, 27 of which were self-isolated and one being hospitalized.

To date, since the pandemic reached Kentucky in March, Clinton County has seen 146 cases of COVID-19.

In addition to Clinton County’s current 20 COVID-19 cases, other counties in the LCDHD region’s case counts, and the number of hospitalized patients in parentheses: Adair, 27 (1); Casey, 7 (0); Cumberland, 7 (0); Green, 10 (2); McCreary, 33 (3); Pulaski, 51 (4); Russell, 27 (2); Taylor, 34 (1); Wayne 35 (1).

Across the 10 county area, the total number of cases was up considerably from last week’s report, 259 to 222.

Of this week’s 259 cases, 15 were listed as being hospitalized, two more than the number of hospitalized patients a week ago.

Since the pandemic reached Kentucky back in March, there have been 69 deaths in the 10 county region, two of which were Clinton County residents.