Top White House doctor says KY should shut down bars. Beshear to announce ‘extra steps’ Monday.
In meetings with Gov. Andy Beshear and Kentucky health officials Sunday, Dr. Deborah Birx, the response coordinator for the White House coronavirus task force, recommended Kentucky close bars and reduce restaurant capacity to help prevent the increasing spread of COVID-19.
“We have significant concerns about the rising test positivity rate and the rising number of cases,” Birx said. “We can see what is happening in the south moving north.”
Birx said Kentucky was currently in “the yellow zone,” meaning that the number of cases are rising, but it still hasn’t risen to the level of concern of places like Florida and Texas.
Beshear announced 316 new cases of COVID-19 Sunday. While the increase was smaller than case numbers reported in recent days, Beshear said in his announcement that could be because less testing goes through labs on Sundays.
Four new deaths were also reported Sunday, including a 37-year-old man and 87-year-old woman from Jefferson County, a 70-year-old woman from Harlan County and a 76-year-old man from Ohio County, according to Beshear’s office.
Kentucky’s positivity rate has been increasing over the past few weeks — on Saturday, the positivity rate stood at 5.41 percent — causing Beshear to issue a mandatory mask order and limit in-person gatherings to groups of 10 people. Beshear has already implied that closing bars and reducing restaurant capacity to 25 percent would be the next step, based on existing recommendations from the White House, but said he was waiting to see if the numbers leveled out.
Beshear said he will make an announcement on the recommendations Monday.
“I think it’s really important when we take those extra steps to be able to communicate directly and we will have the opportunity to do that tomorrow,” Beshear said.
Beshear said he will also comment on “where we are” with public schools on Monday. The Fayette County Public School system has already said it will start the school year with online-learning. Birx said it will be possible to open schools if people commit to wearing masks and follow social distancing guidelines in order to reduce the number of cases.
On Sunday, Birx met with Beshear, Dr. Steven Stack, Kentucky’s Public Health director, and Beshear’s chief of staff LaTasha Buckner, before appearing in a round table with public health experts and executives at healthcare facilities like Norton, St. Elizabeth and Baptist Health as well as executives from companies like Toyota and Lexmark.
Birx said there was a trend throughout southern states with surging cases, where people younger than 30 were contracting the virus and unknowingly spreading it to their parents and grandparents. In Kentucky, people between 20 and 29 make up 19 percent of the total COVID-19 cases.
“This current wave of infections is very much across the state, probably due to people being exposed unknowingly when they are out and about, who have then brought those infections back to their homes and back to their home counties,” Birx said.
That asymptomatic spread can be deadly. While people older than 80 only make up 6.32 percent of the state’s COVID-19 cases, they account for 50 percent of the deaths from the virus.
Birx said that while early in the pandemic the hot spots were large urban areas and places like nursing homes or factories, the disease has spread to the household level.
“I think that’s why we have a real call to action for every Kentuckian to wear a mask,” Birx said.
Beshear and Stack have said there are several clusters throughout the state that have been tied to travel. Birx — who has been travelling through states with high rates of COVID-19 — said she is still negative for the virus and said that was proof that people can travel to some extent.
“You can travel if you’re super careful,” Birx said.
This story was originally published July 26, 2020 at 2:56 PM.
