Owensboro’s metropolitan area is 17th in the country in terms of where new reported cases of COVID-19 are rising the fastest, according to the latest numbers of an ongoing national study.
For months, The New York Times has been monitoring the COVID-19 outbreak in metro areas across the country “to help provide a detailed picture of the past, present and future of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States.”
As of Friday, Owensboro’s metro area — which includes about 120,000 people living in Daviess, Hancock and McLean counties — had one of the highest increases between the number of cases in the past week compared with the week prior.
On a population-adjusted basis, Owensboro metro rose from 405 new cases to 674 — an increase of 225 cases per 100,000 people.
Three other Kentucky metro areas ranked even higher, including Bowling Green at 15th with an increase of 237 per 100,000 people.
However, it’s worth noting that the cumulative number of cases since the start of the outbreak for Owensboro metro is relatively low. With just more than 4,500 cases reported — equating to 38.3 cases per 1,000 residents — Owensboro metro ranks 352nd among areas with at least 50,000 residents, according to the study.
“Our overall incidence rate was not really high compared to other places in the U.S. right now, but what is kind of alarming is how quick our numbers are growing compared to everywhere else,” said Green River District Health Department Director Clay Horton.
Part of that, he noted, may be that other places started spiking earlier so their incidence rate isn’t currently growing as quickly.
“But I don’t think any way you slice it that it’s good news,” Horton said. “It’s not materially different than what we’ve been saying for the last few weeks.”
Coronavirus cases — and resulting deaths — in Daviess County and the surrounding areas of steadily been on the rise.
To date, the Owensboro metro area has reported the following numbers:
- Daviess County – 3,799 cases, 2,813 recovered, 196 ever hospitalized, 53 deaths
- Hancock County – 312 cases, 241 recovered, 18 ever hospitalized, 11 deaths
- McLean County – 410 cases, 320 recovered, 34 ever hospitalized, 20 deaths
While there have been some small outbreaks in specific places, Horton said it’s all a result of increased community spread.
“We’ve had a number of outbreaks in long-term care facilities, but I see that as more of a symptom of what’s going on in the greater community rather than some type of anomaly,” he said. “That’s true for our whole region and I think our state at large.”
Horton said the Owensboro metro, along with the rest of the seven-county Green River District, is in a dangerous place when it comes to COVID-19.
“This is the exponential growth we’ve been worried about for so long,” he said. “The more cases you have, the doubling of new cases happens more quickly and it gets to a place where it’s just completely unmanageable. Quite frankly, that’s the spot our community is in right now. It’s very, very difficult to operate in this environment. I would imagine anyone that’s managing a business, that’s managing our workforce, I think they are probably all feeling the pinch right now.”
While the ideal situation would be to reverse course and see the numbers going down rapidly, Horton said the first step will be to simply slow the spread.
“It’s going to be very difficult to see a plateau,” he said. “I think what we want to look for first is a slowing of the number of new cases, then a plateau, then hopefully we can get a decline.”
Being in the middle of the holiday season makes the likelihood of that happening soon lower if people don’t continue to sacrifice, Horton said.
“This is a time of year where people want to socialize and interact, but that type of activity is where the virus thrives,” he said. “It’s not fair to anybody, but it is what it is in terms of the spread of the virus. We know what we can do to slow this down, it’s just a matter of whether it means enough to us to do it or not.”
Still, Horton said he sees a light at the end of the tunnel, though it’s still far away. Vaccines are expected to start being distributed later this month, but it will still be at least spring or summer before those are expected to become widely available to the general public.
“Help is on the way, but it’s not going to be here overnight,” Horton said of the vaccines. “I think we’re going to have a very difficult December, we’re probably going to have a hard January, but I’m very hopeful that 2021 will incrementally get better throughout the year.”
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