While the health department has been tracking and posting information about COVID cases, hospitalizations, and deaths since the start of the pandemic, Kevin Hall with the health department says residents who want that information now will need to head to the state Department for Public Health website.
So why the change? Part of the answer has to do with shifting resources.
"This is consistent with health departments across Kentucky. As funding is no longer widely available, there are staff cuts at health departments, including ours. Those temporary workers that were provided through some of those federal funds are no longer there," Hall explains. "So we're needing to maximize the time of our staff. Instead of duplicating the efforts that are going into the state website, we'd rather have them be able to focus on things like tracking investigations in vulnerable populations."
And though that could make for some delays in getting that info out to the public, Hall notes some measures aren’t as useful as they used to be, most notably the raw case count. Many cases are now going unreported as people rely on at-home tests.
In addition to county level reports provided by the Public Health Department – think of those green, yellow, and red maps – the CDC also provides county-level data.
