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After seeing a drop in data categories last week, likely due to the holidays, Kentucky’s latest COVID-19 report has seen a rebound in the latest report, which was issued late Monday afternoon.

State public health officials say there were 6,208 new cases over the past seven days in the report dated Jan. 9. That is a significant jump from 3,532 last week, but well below the 8,920 from two weeks ago. A total of 425 cases were among those 18 and younger, compared to 67 the previous week and 945 in the Dec. 26 report.

This brings the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Kentucky to 1,667,321 since the first one was reported in March 2020.

The number of positive cases is likely undercounted since many people who have a positive result from a home test do not report it to state public health officials if they do not require medical treatment or were asymptomatic.

Kentucky’s positivity rate, based on the number of positive tests other than from unreported home kits, has finally started to drop. After rising for five straight weeks and peaking at 12.74% last week, it currently stands at 11.78%.  which is the lowest it has been in three weeks.

The hospital census has now seen increases for four consecutive weeks.  There are currently 491 Kentuckians hospitalized. Of them, 73 are in intensive case and 26 are on a ventilator.

COVID-related deaths last week were 37. That is ten more than last week, but ten below two weeks ago.  This raises the pandemic total of Kentuckians lost to 17,734.

Gov. Andy Beshear continues to urge Kentuckians to get the latest COVID booster shot, especially with the latest omicron subvariant.

“We don’t know a lot about it,” he said, “other than it is even more contagious than the last omicron variant, which means it’s one of the most contagious viruses in the history of plant Earth, or at least in our lifetime. We don’t know yet whether it will cause more or less serious disease. We urge everyone who has not gotten their latest booster to go get it.”

The CDC reports only 12% of Kentuckians who are eligible have received the new booster.