Clinton County’s COVID-19 case numbers continued to take a positive turn in the past week, marking the third consecutive week that local statistics regarding the pandemic have looked up.

With case numbers being at their worst just four weeks ago in early January, the local numbers reported by the Lake Cumberland District Health Department in the past seven days, were the best that have been seen for many, many weeks.

For the fourth consecutive week, Clinton County’s case numbers have seen more cases released than there have been new cases added to the tolls.

In the seven day period from last Tuesday, January 26, through this Monday, February 1, there were 34 new positive cases of COVID-19 added to the Clinton County rolls, while during that same seven day period, there were 54 cases that were released as no longer active or contagious.

In addition, the total number of active cases in Clinton County reached yet another milestone again this week, dropping below the 40 case mark for the first time since early November, 2020.

As of Tuesday morning of this week, Clinton County’s positive caseload was reported as being 35 by LCDHD, a vast improvement from the all-time high number of positive cases here that was reported just a month ago when 131 case were reported here on January 6.

Of those 35 current active cases in Clinton County, four were listed as being hospitalized.

On another positive note, there were no new deaths reported among Clinton County COVID-19 patients during the past seven day reporting period, according to the LCDHD.

As of Tuesday morning, Clinton County had seen 26 of it’s residents pass away due to complications directly attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic.

To date, Clinton County has had 1,274 residents who have tested positive for the COVID-19 disease, meaning that about 12 percent of the county’s 10,218 residents have tested positive at one time or another since the pandemic first moved into Kentucky in March, 2020.

Officials also believe that a large number of residents have likely also contracted the virus but were never tested due to not having any of the symptoms often associated with the disease, thus never being counted as positive cases.

Despite the significant drop in positive case numbers, Clinton County continued to remain in the highest classified range of case spread rates, the critical spread, or “red” zone, as did all 10 of the LCDHD district counties.

However, Clinton County was no longer one of thee worst counties among those 10 counties, which had been the case for several consecutive weeks when our county was the highest rated county in the region, and one of the highest rated in Kentucky in terms of seven day average incidence rate per 100,000 population.

As of Tuesday morning, Clinton County was the third lowest among the 10 LCDHD counties, with a seven day rate of 46.14.

Clinton County has remained in the “red” zone for 122 consecutive days. The incident rate must fall below the 25 mark before a county would drop into the next lower level of spread, the Accelerated Spread zone for cases between 10 and 25 per 100,000.

The other nine counties, and the respective seven day average incident rate per 100,000 was: Taylor (89.25), McCreary (87.88), Cumberland (73.44), Russell (51.81), Casey (49.51), Wayne (49.18), Pulaski (46.39), Green (37.87), Adair (33.48).

Several possible reasons for the drop in infections in the region, as well as across the state, have been mentioned by health officials, including the public continuing the wear masks and limit time spent around crowded public gatherings.

Also, the predicted surges related to Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years gathering have seen the worst in case spikes come and go, according to officials.

Another factor that is being mentioned as a likely factor in the drop in active cases involve that administering of the COVID-19 vaccinations that have taken place already, although the total percentage of the public that have received vaccinations remain low.

A contributing factor in the reduction of cases is also a likely slight effect of “herd immunity” that is being realized in considering that more than 10 percent of the total population here has at one time contracted the disease, and those individuals have experienced some for of limited immunity to the disease.

In addition to Clinton County’s 35 current COVID-19 cases, other counties in the LCDHD region’s case counts, and the number of hospitalized patients in parentheses, Adair 36 (0), Casey 35 (0), Cumberland 30 (3), Green 24 (0), McCreary 102 (7), Pulaski 198 (19), Russell 62 (8), Taylor 74 (8).