295 new Kentucky coronavirus cases and eight deaths. Casinos can reopen June 8.
Gov. Andy Beshear announced 295 new cases of COVID-19 in Kentucky Thursday, bringing the state’s total number of cases to 10,705 and continuing a streak of increased daily cases following Kentucky’s economic reopening.
Beshear said it is too soon to make any judgments about whether the state is experiencing a spike in coronavirus cases, but did acknowledge “they are elevated from where we were going for more than a week.”
Beshear also announced eight new deaths, bringing the state’s death toll to 458. Beshear acknowledged that most of the people who have died with COVID-19 have had an underlying health condition, saying that’s what makes the virus so dangerous.
“That’s what this virus does,” Beshear said. “This virus does not pick off, with a few exceptions, the healthiest among us. It finds those that, with modern medicine, while they may be sick they are still here with their families. And for many of them, it kills them.”
There are currently 518 people in the hospital, the highest since the Beshear administration has been reporting the number, but only 67 Kentuckians in intensive care, which is the lowest. Dr. Steven Stack, Kentucky’s public health commissioner, has pointed out that there is usually a lag between when people are diagnosed and when they are at their sickest.
The three day average of new cases is 238, which is up 119 cases from a week ago when the three-day average hit its lowest point since early April. In Lexington, the number of new cases among the community has increased in the past few weeks. Fayette County has seen a total of 812 cases over the course of the pandemic, according to the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department.
“What we’re going to see is as we test more and as people have more contacts, we’re going to have more positive tests,” Beshear said.
The state has significantly increased its testing capacity and Beshear encouraged people who have participated in protests against police brutality over the last week to get tested. He said he is not aware of any COVID-19 cases stemming from the protests so far, but said it is still too early to know if they will contribute to a spike.
On Thursday, Beshear announced 3,947 new tests. At least 27,428 tests have been conducted since June 1, according to statistics released by the Beshear administration.
“We are well north of what we need to be at for the current yardstick,” Stack said. He said he hopes that the state will be able to keep the “positivity rate” (the percent of people testing positive for the virus) below 3 percent. Kentucky is currently at 4.07 percent.
Despite the seeming rise in new cases, the state still plans on reopening more businesses on Monday, including in-home childcare, libraries and cultural facilities. Beshear said Thursday that he also will allow casinos with historic horse racing machines, such as the Red Mile Racetrack in Lexington, to reopen Monday.
The state has seen record unemployment since the beginning of the pandemic — there have been a total of 880,000 first-time unemployment claims since March — and Beshear said Kentucky has processed 90 percent of those claims. He acknowledged that it is difficult for the 10 percent of people whose claims haven’t been processed, but said there are federal laws the state must comply with before claims can be processed.
“We can’t ignore federal law and we need to go through all these hoops,” Beshear said. “And I think people can understand that, I think the frustration is that it isn’t always communicated to them.”
The state is still on track with it’s phased reopening, Beshear said, allowing more people to return to work. The state’s new jobless claims went down 20 percent from last week.
Beshear said there is still much to be seen in how the epidemic plays out, but that he hopes schools will be able to reopen this fall.
“There’s still really important data that we need, but my goal is to have our kids back at school in the fall,” he said.
Beshear does not plan to have another daily news conference about the coronavirus until Monday.
This story was originally published June 4, 2020 at 4:46 PM.
