Ginger Schultz has become the newest person to win $1 million from Kentucky’s COVID-19 vaccine sweepstakes.

Patricia Short of Lexington won in the first round of drawings.

Governor Andy Beshear presented Schultz, a life-long Louisville resident, with her million-dollar check at a press conference on Friday.

Schultz got her vaccine back in April. For her, getting the shot was about much more than her own safety.

“Like I said, my main thing was for my mom and my husband who have COPD issues. It’s the right thing to do for yourself, for the people you love, the people who you come in contact with,” said Schultz.

A custodian for Daviess County Public Schools is the winner of the 2021 Fred Award, given in recognition of exceptional service to students and staff.

Daniel Lyne, who is known as 'Mr. Daniel,' is a custodian at Daviess County Middle School and previously worked at East View Elementary School.

The award from the Kentucky Association of School Administrators was presented Friday in Louisiville. School employees are nominated for the award by their coworkers.

Lyne's service dog, Keeta, is considered part of the school community by staff and students. 

The Fred Award is named for mailman Fred Shea, who helped people on his mail route in many ways. He became a symbol for ordinary people doing good in their daily lives after a book about him called The Fred Factor was published in 2004.

Deaths from the pandemic are more than twice as high in Kentucky as the state reports in its COVID-19 death toll, according to estimates from the University of Washington.

Officially, Kentucky has reported around 7,300 COVID-19 deaths, but the latest data from UW’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation estimates more than 17,000 Kentuckians have died as a result of of the pandemic.

This metric, known as “excess mortality,” uses death certificate data to get a more complete picture of the impact of the pandemic.

The magnitude of excess deaths is due, in part, to socioeconomic factors. In Kentucky, that includes a large percentage of the population with chronic health conditions like obesity and diabetes, less access to health care and lower levels of education, Mokdad said.

Bowling Green-based Med Center Health announced Thursday that it will require employees to get the COVID-19 vaccine. 

The vaccine requirement applies to medical staff, students, residents, fellows, and vendors across the Med Center health system. 

The deadline for getting immunized carries some symbolic weight.

Those in leadership positions will have through August 9 to receive their first doses, while all others have through September 1.  The deadline is close to the one-year anniversary of the death of Dr. Rebecca Shadowen, the region’s top infectious disease specialist who contracted the coronavirus last year before vaccines were available. 

Tennessee’s science museums have jointly decided to promote vaccines during August, which is the CDC’s National Immunization Awareness Month.

The Science Alliance of Tennessee is a consortium of six nonprofit science museums. Most of their effort entails filling their social media feeds with fact-based information. They also plan to hand out cards explaining mRNA technology and antibodies. The cards have “myth-buster” material about COVID shots:

Myth: Vaccines will make me sick.

Plausible: We might experience some of the same symptoms … the big difference is we recover quickly because there’s no harmful virus in us.

The illness that is killing birds in Kentucky and nationwide still isn’t identified, according to a statement released by the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Wednesday.

National wildlife agencies and officials in affected states have ruled out some common bird illnesses like salmonella and chlamydia, avian influenza virus, West Nile virus and other viruses and parasites.

They have also confirmed that the illness is not House Finch eye disease. Though the illness and House Finch eye disease have similar symptoms, the two do not appear to be associated. 

House Finch eye disease occurs naturally in Kentucky during warmer months and cases have been reported this year. However the new illness is affecting primarily juvenile common grackles, blue jays, European starlings and American robins.

Gov. Andy Beshear’s administration might partner with the federal government to build a new unemployment insurance system.

Like much of the nation, Kentucky struggled to keep up with a surge of applications for unemployment benefits during the coronavirus pandemic.

The Beshear administration has blamed the problems on understaffing, antiquated software and security issues that have led to delays in overhauling the system.

During a legislative hearing on Tuesday, Labor Cabinet Secretary Jamie Link said the federal government is forming a consortium of five or six states to share a “core unemployment system” and Kentucky is considering joining.

But he said the state may decide to overhaul the system on its own.