Kentucky will receive 36,500 doses of the new single-shot Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine giving the state a third vaccine to combat the coronavirus.
Governor Andy Beshear said it’s his hope the Johnson & Johnson vaccine will be administered in the next seven days. He said just under 700,000 people have been vaccinated statewide which is about 16-percent of the state’s population.
He said about half of the state’s 70 and older population have been vaccinated. He said the state will now move to vaccinate inmates in the state’s correctional system that are over 70 in the same day the state moved to Phase 1C of the vaccination plan.
Beshear said he is still working to increase vaccination numbers of Kentucky African-Americans which account for 8.4-percent of the cases and five-percent of the vaccinations. Meanwhile, little has been said about the Hispanic population that accounts for five-percent of the state’s cases but one-percent of the vaccinations.
He said the state is expecting to double the number of people vaccinated in the state in the next month.
The increased vaccination numbers come at a time when the state has seen a seventh straight day of declining COVID-19 cases.
The state reported 509 new cases of COVID-19 Monday and announced 15 deaths. The number of cases has dropped 72-percent since a peak on January 12.
