Daviess County continues COVID-19 upswing

Apr. 14—Daviess County reported 21 new cases of COVID-19 Tuesday, bringing its total number of confirmed cases of the virus to 10,062.

County Judge-Executive Al Mattingly said during a virtual community update Tuesday that three Daviess Countians are currently hospitalized with the virus.

Mattingly said the county reported an average of 12 positive cases per 100,000 residents over seven days, leaving it in the state's Orange Zone.

"Daviess County at one time had gotten down to (an average of) 9.4, which moved us into the Yellow Zone," he said. "We have gotten back up because we have had a fairly significant increase in number today and this past Friday."

"Hopefully we can get it back down."

The statewide average is currently 10.66 per 100,000 residents over seven days.

As of Monday, 23,403 Daviess County residents have been completely vaccinated against the virus, or 23.1% of the total population. Of those, 10,928 were individuals over the age of 65, or 62.3% of the total county population over that age.

Mattingly was joined for the weekly update by Dr. Andrea Moore, OBGYN, and Dr. Michael Kelley of Owensboro Health.

Mattingly asked Moore to clear up some of the common misconceptions and conspiracy theories circulating about the safety of the COVID-19 vaccine for pregnant women.

"I think the most recent one is that getting the vaccine might affect future fertility," Moore said. "... It comes out of a rumor from Europe actually."

Moore said it is a complete falsehood that she has had to fight lately.

American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine and the American Society for Reproductive Medicine all recommend pregnant women, women currently breastfeeding and women who are thinking about getting pregnant do consider getting the COVID-19 vaccine.

"The main reason is that pregnant women can have a more severe case than other women of the same age," Moore said. "In fact, pregnant women, when they have severe illness, tend to have higher rates of hospitalization, ICU stays, ventilatory support needs and even death."

Mattingly asked Moore if doctors are seeing cases where a pregnant woman is passing the virus to her unborn child in something known as vertical transmission.

"Vertical transmission has not been shown to be occurring," she said.

Moore said doctors are seeing "bad outcomes" in some cases where pregnant women have contracted COVID-19 and experienced miscarriage, pre-term labor and pre-term delivery.

Mattingly asked Kelley about the status of individuals under 16 years old qualifying for the COVID-19 vaccine.

Kelley said there are currently studies being done, focusing on the 12-15 age group and that he believes an emergency authorization will be forthcoming.

"There are still kids that get very sick and die," he said. "It is a much smaller percentage, thank God, but we have to look at how to vaccinate as a community, as a whole, as a civilization to be able to protect everyone."

Kelley also explained how the messenger RNA in the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines works, as some individuals are still uncomfortable with how quickly a COVID-19 vaccine was developed.

"MRNA technology for the first two vaccines, the Pfizer and the Moderna, has been around for a long time," he said. "The idea behind it is actually complicated and simplistic all at once."

The vaccines work by injecting a benign code into the body that the cells recognize, take up and transcribe the fragment of that code, which mimics the SARS CoV-2 virus, he said. That code fragment then quickly degrades in the cell.

"It never goes into the nucleus where the DNA is, so it is never a part of your Gnome," Kelley said.

The cell then creates an immune response and then goes away.

"People think that physicians are in some echo chamber," he said. "We listen to a lot of people and a lot of different things and look at it in a very diligent and scientific way. I am very comfortable with the speed in which this happened and the way in which it was done."

Nathan Havenner, Messenger-Inquirer, nhavenner@messenger-inquirer.com, 270-228-2837

Nathan Havenner, Messenger-Inquirer, nhavenner@messenger-inquirer.com, 270-228-2837