From quarantine, Beshear announces 643 new COVID-19 cases in KY, 3 deaths
While quarantined inside the governor’s mansion, Gov. Andy Beshear announced 643 new cases of COVID-19 in Kentucky on Monday, edging the state’s case total up to 80,930. Three more people with the virus have died, bringing the death toll to 1,255.
Beshear said the state remains in an escalation, and while new case volume on Mondays tends to be artificially low because of weekend lab schedules, this Monday’s set a record.
“That means we’ve got to do better,” Beshear said, asking Kentuckians to remain diligent in taking precautions and to moderate their activities: “We want to spread out the number of contacts we have in any given day.”
The rate of positive tests, a seven-day average, is 4.37 percent.
The governor gave his daily update from an isolated location inside the governor’s mansion, where his family is currently quarantining after potential exposure to the virus on Saturday. That day, the governor’s family rode in a car with a member of his security detail who later tested positive for COVID-19. Everyone was wearing masks in the car, his office said, and Beshear, his wife and their children have no symptoms. Beshear said he will be tested on Tuesday. He will give each his 4 p.m. updates virtually this week instead of from the Capitol rotunda.
“We’re doing great,” Beshear said Monday. “I feel great. My family feels great. We are trying to be really positive about this situation.”
Public health guidelines recommend that people quarantine if they’ve been within six feet of someone who has COVID-19 for more than 15 minutes, since there is no cure or treatment for the disease.
“We’re doing this to break the chain of transmission,” Dr. Steven Stack, Kentucky’s Public Health Commissioner, said of Beshear and his family’s decision to heed public health guidance and quarantine.
The point of quarantining, Stack explained, is to isolate a person who is exposed to someone with the virus until “they are outside the window where they themselves could develop an infection, so the chain of transmission will end with them.”
Across Kentucky’s colleges and universities, 532 students and four staff have tested positive in the last 14 days, according to the state Department of Public Health, which has slightly modified its reporting of official coronavirus cases. The state is no longer reporting active case numbers, just new cases, case totals, and deaths.
In K-12 schools in the last two weeks, the state counted 385 new positives among students and 190 among staff. The K-12 dashboard, where districts add new case information each day, hasn’t been updated since Friday.
Nineteen additional child care centers have reported at least one case of the virus, and a dozen staff and 14 kids have tested positive, Beshear said. In nursing and assisted living homes, 37 residents and 40 staff are newly positive, meaning 776 residents and 505 staff members are actively positive.
Beshear on Monday repeated his call for Kentuckians to both wear masks and maintain distance from others outside their home, not just opt for one or the other. “It’s not a mask or six feet, it’s a mask and six feet,” he said.
There are 672 people across the state hospitalized with the virus, 180 of whom are in intensive care and 93 are on ventilators.
Kentucky last week saw its highest case total of the pandemic, with 7,444 new positives — a weekly record even without the 1,472 backlogged cases from Fayette County that were added to the state’s tally last Wednesday.
This story was originally published October 12, 2020 at 4:42 PM.
