‘Fairly good day in Kentucky.’ 45 new coronavirus cases found Sunday. Total is 439.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear announced Sunday that 45 more people have tested positive for COVID-19, bringing the Kentucky total to 439. The increase was much lower than the state has seen in the past three days and there were no new deaths.
“As of now, we’ve had a fairly good day in Kentucky,” Beshear said, but added that “the surge” of the coronavirus continues. The number of cases has increased by more than 300 in the last seven days.
Earlier Sunday, Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer said there are 140 confirmed cases in Jefferson County and the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department said there are 74 cases in Lexington.
Beshear also announced new cases in Hopkins, Boyd, McCracken, Taylor, Calloway, Lewis, Nelson, Scott, Franklin, Campbell and Kenton counties. So far, at least nine people have died of the coronavirus in Kentucky and at least 64 people have recovered from the illness.
Two of the positive cases are administrators at the Green River Correctional Complex in Central City. Beshear said health officials believe the administrators did not have any contact with inmates and that no inmates have tested positive so far.
Dr. Steven Stack, Kentucky’s public health commissioner, pleaded with people to follow the governor’s recommendations for social distancing.
“This is crunch time,” he said. “There are a number of different ways things can play out. We can make it play out really well or we can make it play out really badly.”
Stack said there were still reports of churches meeting in Graves County and said there was a man in Mercer County who tested positive for the novel coronavirus but has since refused to tell health department workers who he may have come in contact with in recent days.
“You can’t be doing that,” Stack said. He said people should assume those around them have the coronavirus and act accordingly.
As the number of coronavirus cases surges across the country, states are scrambling to count and expand their number of intensive care unit beds and ventilators, since severe cases of the respiratory disease often require ventilators to help patients breathe.
Beshear said there are 18,500 hospital beds, 1,300 intensive care unit beds and 1,352 ventilators in Kentucky.
If people ignore his warnings to stay at least six feet away from others at all times, Beshear said there will be days when the state doesn’t have enough ventilators to treat all the patients who need them.
“We will hit a critical point in our capacity,” Beshear said. “It’s our job to make sure we have as few of those days as possible.”
After a gorgeous spring weekend, Beshear said there were issues with people gathering in groups outside, specifically on golf courses and running in groups. He said he has asked mayors and county judge-executives to shut down any golf courses where people aren’t practicing proper social distancing.
He also warned operators of stores that remain open, specifically home repair stores, to enforce social distancing in their establishments. Otherwise, “we’re going to see how essential they are,” he said.
“We don’t want to have to do this,” Beshear said. “Folks, I’m not doing this to be mean. I’m doing it because if that many people are together, every single contact they’ve had is shared and the virus spreads.”
Beshear said the government won’t be able to force everyone to practice social distancing, but instead said it will require “positive social peer pressure.”
This story was originally published March 29, 2020 at 5:38 PM.
