FRANKFORT, Ky. — Kentucky's regional vaccination centers will begin giving COVID-19 shots to people in phase 1C starting March 1, Gov. Andy Beshear announced Monday.
Vaccine phase 1C includes essential workers, anyone 60 or older and anyone 16 or older with CDC highest risk COVID-19 conditions. Phase 1C vaccinations will still be prioritized by age, Beshear said. Find a list of who's eligible, high risk conditions and essential fields here.
One of those regional hubs, located at the Northern Kentucky Convention Center, will start administering vaccines to people in 1C. Find a full list of regional vaccine sites, searchable by county, here.
Up to 1.3 million Kentuckians will be eligible under 1C, Beshear said, and it could take 11 weeks to complete that phase.
"Moving to 1C is gonna be exciting for a lot of people, but understand there's a lot of people in 1C. That means it may be challenging to get signed up in the beginning, but remember a lot of vaccine is on its way," he said.
Since December, Kentucky has administered more than 562,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses. Last week, winter weather stopped delivery of most vaccines, and the state had to dip into its vaccine stores.
"We were expecting about 71,000 doses; we received 6,825. What that meant is that we worked out way through almost everything we had stored up and we now have used almost 98.5% of every first dose that we had," the governor said.
The remaining 65,000 doses are coming this week along with this week's allotment, Beshear said.
New COVID cases fall for six straight weeks
Kentucky recorded 530 new cases of COVID-19 Monday, the lowest single-day count since Oct. 5, as well as 13 coronavirus-related deaths. As of Monday, Kentucky has seen six straight weeks of decline in new cases.
While Beshear cautioned that last week's winter weather could have affected COVID-19 testing, he still said Kentucky COVID-19 trends are moving "in the right direction... perhaps the most positive since the pandemic began, even though our cases are still higher than at many points in the pandemic."
Because of those trends, Beshear said it's possible the state could soon lift or reduce some capacity restrictions for Kentucky businesses.
Since March, 397,526 Kentuckians have tested positive for COVID-19 and 4,460 have died of the virus. The state's test positivity rate is 6.60%.
Hospitalizations have been on the decline for several weeks. Currently, 870 Kentuckians are hospitalized for COVID-19, with 243 people in intensive care units and 119 on ventilators. Kentucky's coronavirus fatality rate has risen to 1.12%.
Using the state's contact tracing database, NKY Health reports 1,681 active coronavirus cases in Boone, Campbell, Grant and Kenton counties, and 36,084 people have recovered from the virus as of Monday. Since the pandemic began, 252 Northern Kentuckians have died from the virus.
Watch a replay of the briefing below:
