Kentucky's top health official is warning residents not to become complacent as more people are vaccinated against COVID-19, citing new cases of a more fast-spreading mutation.
With the release of slightly relaxed CDC recommendations for fully vaccinated Americans, there are also new worries.
"A real concern I think most public health professionals have is if people misinterpret this as we don't have to pay attention to the virus and we don't have to do our masking and social distancing," state Public Health Commissioner Steven Stack says. "That would be a mistake. If we do that, we run the risk of supercharging the pandemic when hopefully we should be getting near the pandemic."
The words of caution come as Kentucky reports two new known instances of the more contagious COVID strain first discovered in the United Kingdom — one case in Fayette County and another in Jefferson County. Stack says it's inevitable the strain will spread in the commonwealth if citizens don't stick to the now familiar safety guidelines, especially in public, and get vaccinated as soon as possible.
On Monday, Gov. Beshear announced 834,130 Kentuckians – or a fourth of the adult population – have now received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. The state has also logged eight straight weeks of declining COVID-19 cases, including a Monday new case count that's the lowest it's been mid-September.
“This is the exact type of trajectory we want to see as we are vaccinating people,” Beshear briefed Kentuckians. “This is in many ways a race against time against the variants."
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