Clinton County’s COVID-19 status over the past week continued to be extremely positive in comparison to where the county has been during the past 13 months of pandemic life, but there was some discouraging news, nonetheless.

After 13 consecutive days of having no new cases reported by the Lake Cumberland Area District Health Department, including six days over the past week, two new cases in Clinton Count were reported by the agency in its Daily Information Brief on Monday evening.

Clinton County had previously spent several days with no current active cases amongst its population, but Monday’s development moved the current case number in the county to two.

According to the report, the new cases involved relatively young males, one 32 years old, who was symptomatic, and a 34 year-old male, who was asymptomatic.

Neither patient was hospitalized, meaning that as of Tuesday morning of this week, Clinton County continued to have no COVID-19 patients being treated in a hospital.

Clinton County also had an additional death added to its rolls with Monday’s report, a development that LCDHD officials explained as being a result of the agency currently working to reconcile its records with those of the state of Kentucky.

According to Monday’s brief, the additional death added to the Clinton County toll was one that had actually occurred earlier this year.

“The deaths we announce today are an 83-year-old individual from Clinton who passed in January and an 89-year-old individual from Cumberland who died in February. Both cases were found when auditing local and state data, and both cases had been released from public health observation, but later succumbed to lasting complications from the illness,” the report explained.

The additional death brings the total number of COVID-19 related deaths among Clinton County residents to 30.

To date, Clinton County has had 1,447 cases of COVID-19 among its residents since the pandemic began over a year ago.

The new cases this week, and the additional death, moved Clinton County out of the lowest level of infection rate, the “green” or On Track rate of less than one case per 100,000 population in a seven day period.

Clinton County currently is in the next highest level of infection, the Community Spread level, or “yellow,” with a seven day incident rate greater than 1-10 per 100,000 population.

Clinton County’s population figure currently used to calculate that seven day incident rate is 10,218.

Vaccines continue to be available at the Welcome Center, through a clinic sponsored by The Med Center at Albany, and walk-in appearances for the vaccines are now being accepted.

Appointments for getting the vaccine are still available, and may be obtained by texting SHOT to 606-387-3646 or by emailing AlbanyVaccine@mchealth.net, or by calling 606-387-3646 and leaving a message.

Although case number scontinue to appear to be positive in comparison to much of the past 13 months of this pandemic, health officials continue to urge that safety precautions be used by the general public, as well as trying to convince the public to get vaccinated.

“Don’t forget that at both the world level and in several states, we are seeing sharp increases in new COVID-19 cases,” the most recent LCDHD Daily Information Brief noted. “Therefore, please do not assume that the pandemic is completely behind us and take the vaccine as soon as you can. Also, until the vaccine is widely available, and a significant percentage of the population has taken it, let’s all do our part in slowing the spread of COVID-19 by wearing our face coverings, avoiding crowds (especially in confined spaces), social distancing when around others, increasing our hand hygiene, increasing our general sanitation, and by avoiding touching our faces.”

Across the 10 county district, the remaining nine county case totals and the number of hospitalized patients in parentheses were: Adair 12 (1), Casey 16 (3), Clinton 2 (0), Cumberland 1 (0), Green 3 (1), McCreary 19 (5), Pulaski 35 (3), Russell 12 (0), Taylor 30 (1), Wayne 5 (2).

There are currently 135 active cases across the 10 county LCDHD district, with 16 of those being hospitalized patients.

To date, the district has reported 21,691 total cases and has reported 387 deaths from COVID-19 infections.