COVID-19 and Lexington

COVID-19 has been confirmed in Lexington, and this page will provide all the updates and information offered by the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department. You can also get daily updates on our Facebook and Twitter accounts.

For information on COVID-19 Vaccinations please visit our COVID-19 Vaccination Information page.

Updates

Aug. 15, 2022: The CDC has updated its guidance for COVID-19. Please check out the following links for the latest updates:

March 21, 2022: The Lexington-Fayette County Health Department (LFCHD) will no longer be contacting each individual person who receives a positive test result for the COVID-19 infection.

This change in our practice was made after careful analysis of data and public health guidance. Public health experts agree that intensive universal case investigation and contact tracing are no longer optimal at this phase of the pandemic. LFCHD will focus on targeting investigations in high-risk settings, congregate settings and those serving vulnerable populations. Learn more, including what this means for you, at www.lfchd.org/ContactTracing2022.

March 8, 2022: COVID-19 Community Levels are a new tool to help communities decide what prevention steps to take based on the latest data. Levels can be low, medium, or high and are determined by looking at hospital beds being used, hospital admissions, and the total number of new COVID-19 cases in an area. Take precautions to protect yourself and others from COVID-19 based on the COVID-19 Community Level in your area. (Click on an image below for a larger look at the CDC’s guidance for each level):

Important Links

March 14, 2022: Information below this update is being kept for historic/archival purposes and may be outdated for the public. Please visit the CDC and Kentucky Department for Public Health sites for the most recent information.

Archived updates

Dec. 28: The CDC has updated and shortened the recommended isolation and quarantine period for the general population. The updated guidance can be found here: Updated Isolation & Quarantine Guidance for General Population or on the CDC website. Learn more: https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s1227-isolation-quarantine-guidance.html.

Sept. 28: Starting Wednesday, Sept. 29, free booster doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine will be available for qualifying adults by same-day appointment in our Public Health Clinic for qualifying adults, 650 Newtown Pike. Call 859-288-2483. Learn more: www.lfchd.org/PfizerBooster.

Sept. 24: We are awaiting final guidance on booster doses of the Pfizer vaccine for people ages 65 and older and 18-64 at high risk of severe COVID-19. Complete information will be posted on www.lfchd.org and our Facebook page when available.

At this time, the CDC has not recommended booster doses for those who received the Moderna or Johnson & Johnson (Janssen) vaccines.

Sept. 15: Learn how to get a replacement COVID-19 vaccination card: www.lfchd.org/covidreplacementcard.

July 29: In light of the CDC’s updated recommendations (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/fully-vaccinated-guidance.html) and the rise in the number of cases involving the Delta variant of COVID-19, everyone (regardless of vaccination status) who enters our building at 650 Newtown Pike will be required to wear a mask or face covering effective July 30.

May 26: Effective June 1, 2021, the COVID-19 case count information will be updated every morning Monday-Friday. Each update reflects the total through the previous day, with Friday’s count reported on Monday. There will be no data entered for Saturday and Sunday. Any cases from Saturday and Sunday will be processed with Monday’s count and reported Tuesday. This will not affect the 7-day rolling average.

May 20: Healthy at Work guidance has been updated. The new guidelines can be found here: Healthy at Work Minimum Requirements.

Jan. 11: Vaccination sites in Lexington continue to follow state and federal guidance for prioritizing COVID-19 vaccine distribution. We remain early in Phase 1A providing the vaccine to healthcare workers. Lexington has more than 20,000 healthcare workers, meaning it will take longer to vaccinate this first group than in some other areas of the state, given the limited doses of vaccine available.

We do not have stockpiles of the vaccine waiting to be used – we learn on Friday how many doses we will receive, receive them on Monday and use them by the middle of the week. No doses are wasted.

We are not currently having people sign up for notifications for other phases because plans are still being made on how those vaccinations will be handled. This includes working with the city’s Vaccine Task Force. Once more information is ready for notifications, it will be shared a number of ways, including our website, traditional media, social media, email lists and more to reach as many people in Lexington as possible.

Jan. 6: COVID-19 vaccination distribution information.

Dec. 17: New regulations relating to COVID-19 in Lexington can be found here:
Hearing Procedures for Appeals from Mask Mandate Order
Hearing Procedures for Appeals from Quarantine or Self-Isolation Orders

Nov. 24: To allow our employees to enjoy the holiday (and their first break since the pandemic began!), we will be closed Thursday, Nov. 26, for Thanksgiving. This includes our COVID-19 response team, meaning new positive cases will not be contacted until Friday. Cases will also not be released from isolation orders on Thursday. The COVID-19 response team returns to work Friday, Nov. 27. Our website will not have numbers updated on Thursday but will return to updates Friday. All other public health services will be closed Friday and will return to regular hours Monday, Nov. 30.

Nov. 17: Because of the large spike in the number of new COVID-19 cases reported daily, we are streamlining our contact tracing process to focus on contacting the positive cases to get them into isolation as quickly as possible.
If you live in Lexington and test positive for COVID-19, please begin your isolation period immediately, and you will be contacted by the health department as soon as possible. We are also asking you to start contacting anyone who you have been in close contact with to help slow the spread. We will only be able to follow up on contacts in certain higher-risk situations so that our team can focus on identifying and contacting the increasing number of new cases and isolating them.

Nov. 9: Starting Nov. 9, we are transitioning to the state’s contact tracing system. Over the next few weeks, our staff will be entering cases into the state’s tracking system while also continuing to use our existing system. We are working with the Kentucky Department for Public Health to make the transition as smooth as possible.

Part of the transition includes loading data from all previous cases into the new system. We do not anticipate the transition will cause any delays in case investigations or in updating our daily COVID-19 case counts on our website. However, specific demographic information might not be available for our daily charts/graphs in the interim. The charts/graphs will return as soon as the information is available to be pulled from the new system.

Oct. 7: The Lexington-Fayette County Health Department, with assistance from the Kentucky Department for Public Health, has developed a way to enter more than 1,900 of Lexington’s COVID-19 cases into a state system. This will allow the state’s reported COVID-19 case numbers for Lexington to more closely align with Lexington’s cumulative case count. We are appreciative of the community’s understanding as we moved through this delay. As previously stated, the delay only existed with data entry; there were no delays in contacting positive cases and close contacts in Lexington.

Oct. 5: As of today, Lexington university and college students who test positive for COVID-19 on Oct. 1, 2020, or later and who were living in Lexington during their exposure to COVID-19 will be counted as a case recorded in Fayette County. In other words, most students who choose to isolate outside the county will now be considered Fayette County cases and will be included in our daily reporting; this includes in-state and out-of-state students. For those students who isolate elsewhere, the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department or the Kentucky Department for Public Health will be in contact with the appropriate local health departments where the student is isolating. The outside jurisdiction will still be responsible for isolating and monitoring the new cases. Following the request of the Kentucky Department for Public Health, the change was made to more accurately reflect the spread of disease locally and to be more consistent with other jurisdictions’ case-counting methodology.

Frequently Asked Questions