342 new Kentucky COVID-19 cases and 5 deaths. Beshear unveils back-to-school plan.
Gov. Andy Beshear announced 342 new cases of COVID-19 and five additional deaths in Kentucky on Monday, bringing the total case count to 57,282. The death toll is up to 1,065.
The governor and Dr. Steven Stack, the state’s public health commissioner, also outlined a plan that will allow individual school districts to determine if they should return to in-person classes on Sept. 28 and each week thereafter, based on the prevalence of the coronavirus in their community.
Beshear said there won’t by any statewide recommendation about holding classes in-person unless the state’s rate of positive tests rises above 6 percent or hospitals become overwhelmed. He had previously asked districts to wait until at least Sept. 28 before starting in-person classes.
Instead, school districts are expected to use a new color-coded system to make responsible decisions about whether in-person school is safe, he said. Stack said this plan gives local communities a “wide array of latitude for local control.”
Under that system, counties that average more than 25 new cases a day per 100,000 people will be labeled red and should suspend in-person classes and all school-related athletic competitions for at least one week.
“If you’re in the red, it is not responsible to have every day, in-person learning,” Beshear said.
Seven Kentucky counties currently fall in that category, including Warren County, where officials ignored Beshear’s previous recommendation and have already begun in-person learning.
Counties that average less than one new case per 100,000 people are labeled green, and in-person school is encouraged. If a community is reporting 1-10 new cases, it’s designated yellow, which means community spread is sustained and caution is advised. In-person learning can still occur, but a district must have “heightened mitigation factors,” according to the state.
Ten to 25 new cases per 100,000 people puts a county in the orange, meaning they should take more steps to prevent spread, prepare for additional virtual learning and school administrators must consult with the local public health department.
Beshear also signed an emergency regulation on Monday requiring all public and private K-12 schools in Kentucky to report coronavirus information that will be fed into a new state dashboard anyone can access.
Under this regulation, if a student tests positive, their parent or guardian must report it to the district within 24 hours. Each weekday, schools must report each new student and staff positives, and the current number of students in quarantine and isolation, either because of a positive test or direct exposure to a student with the virus. Many colleges and universities already report this information on internal dashboards, which will be linked to the state website.
The goal of the dashboard is to “provide real-time, actionable information” to “empower local decision makers,” Stack said. Districts are expected to report this information “in good faith,” but “there are bound to be discrepancies,” he said.
Schools that have already started in-person classes can begin reporting information to the dashboard immediately, Stack said, but the statewide date of compliance is Sept. 28.
The state has administered 1,057,435 COVID-19 tests, 56,000 of which were new on Monday. The rate of people testing positive, a rolling seven-day average, is 4.17 percent.
At nursing and assisted living homes, 30 residents and 27 staff are newly positive, Beshear said. Six new child care centers have reported at least one case of the virus. Since Friday, five additional staff and five kids have tested positive.
Ten students in K-12 districts across the state are newly positive, according to the state, as are 119 college and university students.
This story was originally published September 14, 2020 at 4:58 PM.
