11 new Kentucky coronavirus deaths and 628 cases. Rate of positive tests is down.
Gov. Andy Beshear announced 628 new cases of COVID-19 on Thursday and 11 new deaths. Kentucky’s total number of cases now stands at 59,370, and the death toll is 1,093.
“If you don’t think you know someone that we’ve lost because of [COVID-19], I’m not sure that you’ve talked to enough people around you,” the governor said at his daily update. “Let’s stop denying it, and let’s do what it takes to defeat it.”
The positive test rate remains below 4 percent, at 3.82 percent. “It means we have significant testing going on,” he said, “but remember, it’s not because we are testing folks that we do better, it’s because of our actions,” like wearing masks and social-distancing.
A total of 1,101,279 tests have been administered since the beginning of the pandemic — 11,119 of which were newly reported Thursday.
The deaths Beshear announced include a 70-year-old woman and a 78-year-old man in Daviess County, and an 83-year-old woman in Webster County.
At K-12 schools across the state, seven more students and one additional staff member tested positive, according to the state Department of Public Health. More than 330 students and 161 staff actively have the virus, including 26 students in Fayette County Public Schools.
Thirteen additional college students have tested positive, for a total of 1,100 active cases, according to the state, which shows the majority of those cases — just over 660 — are at the University of Kentucky.
At nursing and assisted living homes, 56 additional residents and 31 staff positives were announced Thursday. In those facilities, 578 residents and 377 staff are actively positive.
Earlier today, the Kentucky Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the legality of dozens of orders Beshear has enacted since March to try and slow the spread of the virus. Attorney General Daniel Cameron joined plaintiffs in lower court lawsuits seeking the repeal of those regulations, before filing a brief to the high court asking for the same. Cameron has argued Beshear’s actions were an overreach because he circumvented the legislature and never allowed for public input.
During the hearing, hundreds of people gathered outside the state capitol protesting Beshear’s orders, including his mask mandate — few were masked and most were not socially-distanced.
The governor, after the court recessed, said the high court’s decision is “one of life or death.”
At his daily update Thursday afternoon, he said the unmasked protesters unknowingly helped prove his point: “without intending to, they showed how important [a mask mandate] is,” Beshear said. “I still can’t believe that these rules and restrictions have been challenged. Even if [Cameron] wins, we lose, as a commonwealth, because the fewer precautions that we have, the more the virus spreads.”
There are 515 people hospitalized with the virus in Kentucky, 113 of whom are in intensive care.
This story was originally published September 17, 2020 at 4:50 PM.
