Clinton County residents are getting vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus at a rate about par with the surrounding areas, according to the latest figures released from the Center for Disease Control (CDC).

Currently, Clinton County residents can be vaccinated in at least two locations, with The Med Center at Albany sponsoring a vaccination clinic at the Welcome Center, which is currently taking walk-in residents who are wanting to receive a vaccination.

The Clinton County Health Department is also giving vaccinations on an appointment basis as well.

Amy Tomlinson, spokesperson for the Lake Cumberland District Health Department, told the Clinton County News this week that the Clinton County Health Department is still making appointments for vaccinations adding that the district had recently transitioned to the Johnson and Johnson vaccine.

“We are still administering boost (2nd doses) of Moderna as they are due. We received notification last week that the J/J vaccine allocations to the State are unstable at this time, meaning we are not certain the amounts we will be receiving from week to week,” Tomlinson said. “Individuals who are wanting a vaccine are welcome to call the local health department to check on availability.”

However, after Tomlinson made that statement to the Clinton County News on Monday of this week, a new national development surrounding the Johnson and Johnson product emerged on Tuesday morning when it was announced that due to complications, use of that product was being suspended in most states.

As has been the case throughout this pandemic, news and developments have been a constantly moving situation.

The Clinton County Health Department can be contacted by calling (606) 387-5711.

The most recent available data from the CDC regarding vaccination rates for COVID-19 show that 1,903 local residents had received either the single shot of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, or had received both rounds of the Moderna or Pfizer shots and were to be considered “fully vaccinated” in order to be counted in these totals.

As of Saturday evening, April 10, of the 10,218 residents living in Clinton County, 18.6 percent had been fully vaccinated.

All of those vaccinations had been given to Clinton County residents who were 18 years of age or older, and when taking out those who are under the age of 18, the percentage of fully vaccinated citizens rose to 23.9 percent.

Of those 1,903 local residents who are now fully vaccinated, 948 were over the age of 65, an age that is particularly hard hit when they contract the COVID-19 virus.

Clinton County has been one of the hardest hit counties in the nation in regards to the COVID-19 virus, having experienced 1,445 cases since the pandemic began, with a total of 29 related deaths.

Using the baseline figure of cases per 100,000 population, Clinton County has the highest case rate in the 10 county Lake Cumberland District Health Department area with 1,414.17.

The next highest rate in the district currently is Taylor County, with a rate of 1,139.69 cases.

As for the current vaccination numbers, the percentage of citizens who are fully vaccinated across the LCDHD district, according to the CDC, showed that Russell County had the highest percentage with 21.9, while Casey County was the lowest at 13.4 percent.

Cumberland County was also near the high end of the vaccination rate at 20.3, with 1,304 residents being fully vaccinated when the latest figures were released.

Casey County and Wayne County were the two lowest LCDHD counties in regards to vaccination rates at 13.4 percent and 15.8 percent, respectively.

In a report released last Friday by the Kentucky Health News, staff writer Melissa Patrick reported that currently, Kentucky’s vaccine supply is exceeding the state’s demand.

Only about 43 percent of those eligible in Kentucky have received at least one dose, according to figures available last week.

Patrick talked with Shawn Crabtree, the director of the LCDHD for her article last week, and he noted that he had been able to move the 1,000 weekly doses of vaccine that has been allocated to the Pulaski County office, but he noted that some of the counties in this district are having trouble doing so.

“It seems like there is enough vaccine right now; the supply right now is sufficient for the demand. I wish the demand was greater at this point,” Crabtree said. There is some vaccine hesitancy among those who are younger than 50, he said, largely because they don’t see their immediate health risk.

“The problem with that is even if you don’t get extremely sick, if you catch it, you still spread it and we’re wanting to nip this thing out before it mutates enough that it becomes resistant to the vaccine,” he said.

So far, the state has detected 113 cases with mutated “variants of concern” in Kentucky. All but two were the highly contagious B.1.1.7, which was first found in the United Kingdom. The CDC website says only 1,085 cases in Kentucky have undergone genomic testing to detect variants, and the B.1.1.7 variant is now dominant in the U.S.

Crabtree said vaccination scheduling at his county health departments had slowed down for the two-dose Moderna vaccine and that the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine had become more popular.

On Thursday, Gov. Andy Beshear pleaded with Kentuckians at a news briefing to take whatever vaccine is available to them, and not wait for the single-dose vaccine, saying Kentucky only got 7,800 doses of that vaccine this week, a drop from 65,000 last week, and state officials don’t know how many it will get in the upcoming weeks.

He said if people “wait on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, we might not win the race against the variants” of the virus that are more contagious and “It’s going to take us longer to be able to fully ease the restrictions that we all want to get rid of.”

In Patrick’s report, it was also pointed out that education is the key to getting Kentucky residents to take the vaccination and continue to bring this pandemic under control.

That point was emphasized by Anita Bertram, director of the Lewis County Health Department.

“We just need to reassure folks that it’s a safe vaccine and it’s the right thing to do,” she said. “And to get back to any kind of sense of normalcy, we’ve got to get some herd immunity going on.”

Herd immunity, which provides some protection to people who are unwilling or unable to be vaccinated, requires a vaccination rate of 75 to 80 percent for this virus, most health experts say.

David Bolt, CEO of the Kentucky Primary Care Association, of the Primary Care Association, also spoke to the need for education.

“Kentucky is a diverse state,” he said. “You have some large counties that are sparsely populated, and there are a lot of people here that can’t drive, don’t drive, rely on neighbors or friends. And it’s gonna take us a while to get to everybody. But I think the push to have people really understand the importance of the vaccine is imperative and then getting it out to the public.”

Weekly COVID update

For the first time in months, Clinton County made it through an entire week without having any new cases of COVID-19 added to its totals, according to the Lake Cumberland District Health Department.

In its daily case briefings released to the media and the public five days a week, the LCDHD reported each day that no new cases were being reported for Clinton County, while at the same time, a total of four active cases were being removed from the totals and put into the released category.

On Tuesday morning, with those figures in consideration, Clinton County was attributed with having only two active cases of COVID-19.

Also on Tuesday morning, Clinton County, for the first time in 13 months, had moved into the most desirable level of seven day tranmission rate of “On Track”, or green, meaning a rate of new cases less than one per 100,000 population.

Clinton County was the only county on Tuesday morning to be shown in the green level among the 10 county LCDHD district.

In addition, during the past week, there were no new deaths among Clinton County COVID-19 patients. To date, there have been 29 Clinton County residents who have died as a direct result of the illness since the pandemic began in Kentucky in March, 2020.

Although the current downward trend of new cases locally might suggest that the pandemic is on the way toward being over, health officials are still urging the public to continue using precautions as well as urging everyone to get vaccinated as soon as possible in order to prevent yet another surge of new cases.

Across the 10 county district, the remaining nine county case totals and the number of hospitalized patients in parenthesis were:

Adair 15 (1), Casey 23 (5), Cumberland 1 (0), Green 3 (1), McCreary 20 (10), Pulaski 39 (6), Russell 3 (0), Taylor 12 (3), Wayne 7 (3).