With the COVID-19 pandemic that has enveloped our lives for two years hopefully coming to an end and even by some experts’ accounts entering an endemic stage, the Clinton County News will end its weekly case reports with this issue.

Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear announced this week that with case numbers falling in Kentucky, he would cease giving weekly reports as well.

In addition, with the recent changes in the way health officials and health agencies are reporting case numbers, deaths, and vaccination rates, finding reliable information about the current state of infection has become all but impossible.

The Clinton County News has, for nearly two years, provided its readers with a weekly update that included current case numbers among the population of Clinton County, and since its availability, the number of local residents who had been vaccinated against the disease.

A check on Tuesday morning of this week of the Kentucky Cabinet for Public Health website indicated that the COVID-19 vaccination report for Clinton County had not been updated for over a week.

Also included in the reports was the updated number of patients who had died as a direct result of the COVID-19 disease.

At last count, Clinton County had lost 44 residents to COVID-19.

Although the Lake Cumberland District Health Department will continue to release case related numbers on a weekly basis, many of those numbers will be centered around reports that come from the national Center for Disease Control, rather than from the Kentucky Cabinet for Public Health.

After nearly two years of releasing reports from its own investigations, the LCDHD recently moved to a method of reporting statistics from the Kentucky Cabinet for Public Health.

In just the past few weeks, that Kentucky agency reverted from doing its own case investigations and reporting, to relying totally on numbers coming from the Center of Disease Control.

The Clinton County News has felt for the past few weeks, during these reporting changes, that gathering reliable, complete and up to date statistics has become increasingly more difficult, if not impossible.

NEWS Editor Al Gibson would like to express his gratitude to the many readers who have offered comments and words of encouragement during the past two years in our efforts to keep our readers up to date about the current COVID-19 case numbers and vaccination numbers.

He also would like to thank Amy Tomlinson, Director of Lake Cumberland District Health Department, and the entire staff at LCDHD for their straightforwardness in working with the Clinton County News to provide accurate information and being completely available for updates during the past two years as we all worked to get through this pandemic.

The Clinton County News will continue to provide updates on the COVID-19 situation as it feels necessary, if and when new and important information becomes available.

In addition, the Clinton County News will continue to urge its readers and our entire population to keep up to date with the COVID-19 vaccination and all suggested booster vaccinations, in addition to the other vaccinations that need to be kept up to date, especially in children and young adults.