Covid-19 update: 204 new cases, most yet in a day; Beshear further limits store access; violator tip line gets 30,000 calls

University of Kentucky respiratory therapists and nurses who care for covid-19 patients (UKNow photo)  

As news develops in Kentucky about the coronavirus and its covid-19 disease, this item may be updated. Official state guidance is at https://kycovid19.ky.gov.

• Gov. Andy Beshear reported Kentucky's largest number of new covid-19 cases in a single day, 204, and eight deaths, including two patients from Western State Hospital in Hopkinsville, both 86. Others' ages ranged from 63 to 93; most were in their 80s and 90s.
• Two of the deaths were in long-term-care facilities, raising their death toll to 13. Beshear said covid-19 has affected 25 such facilities, with 72 residents and 35 staff members testing positive for the virus. “While we say 25 facilities, at least 10 of them haven’t had residents test positive and have only had staff members," he said. "And many of those staff members were not necessarily in the facility or even around the facility during that period of time." 
• At Western State Hospital in Hopkinsville, three more staffers were reported to be positive for the virus, but no new covid-19 cases were reported. Two residents have died from it. In all, there have been 16 total cases: nine of patients and seven staff.   
• The Green River Correctional Complex in Central City has reported one additional covid-19 case in a staffer and no new infections among inmates. There have been 15 cases: nine inmates and six staff.
• Beshear showed a mask that had been made by Kentucky prisoners, stating that they would first be distributed in the prisons and then to state employees.  
• The governor issued an order that allows one adult per household in a store at a time, with exceptions for children and adults who can't be left without supervision or care. 
• He said his allowing pharmacists to dispense emergency refills for up to a 30-day supply for non-scheduled medications has been extended for another 30 days. 
• Reflecting national concern about the impact of the coronavirus on African Americans, Beshear said that with about of the known cases accounted for, Kentucky’s have been about 80 percent white, 12 percent black; 3.5% other races; 2.5% Asian; and 2% multiracial. 
• On deaths attributed to covid-19, with about 82% of the known cases accounted for, Kentucky deaths have been about 86% white, 12% black and 2% Asian.

• 

  William Miranda

  Beshear displayed a picture of William Miranda of Boyd County, an Omaha Beach D-Day veteran who died over the weekend within days of testing positive for the coronavirus. He was 96. WSAZ-TV in Huntington, W.Va., did a story about him.
• Rick Green, editor of the Courier Journal, explains why the Louisville newspaper is telling the stories of those who have died from covid-19. "Beshear and others may balk at sharing names and personal information, but our staff believes it’s important to pay homage to those felled by the novel coronavirus," he writes. "I believe there is no room for stigmas when a pathogenic nightmare claims those we love."
• Labor Cabinet Chief of Staff Marjorie Arnold said there have been 30,000 calls and online reports to the tip line the state set up March 23 to report violations of Beshear's orders to close non-essential businesses and ban gatherings, resulting in 18 businesses being cited and temporarily ordered to close. As of Tuesday only four had closed, and the state provided no information on the other 14, Daniel Desrochers reports for the Lexington Herald-Leader. 
• Beshear said beds had been ordered for the field hospital at the state fairgrounds, with a hope of having 250 beds available in about two weeks if needed, with a plan to scale up from there. He said alternative sites wouldn't be used until all care facilities across the state are full.
• Jennie Stuart Health in Hopkinsville is laying off 248 employees. The hospital cited reduced elective and non-emergency services, which Beshear has outlawed, the Hoptown Chronicle reported.
• Health Commissioner Steven Stack announced that Kentucky Dam Village State Resort Park will be the first to house a volunteer medical team of four, all third-year medical students.
• The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will begin distributing $30 billion of the $100 billion Congress allocated in an emergency provider relief fund, Modern Healthcare reports. CMS Administrator Seema Verma said the grant funds will be distributed based on Medicare revenue, a methodology that America's Essential Hospitals President and CEO Bruce Siegel says in a statement does little to help some "essential hospitals, which care for disproportionate numbers of uninsured and Medicaid patients." 
• Recognizing that their estimates are "highly uncertain" and that they will be "refined" as more data becomes available, the Kaiser Family Foundation issued a report saying the estimated cost of treating the uninsured hospitalized with covid-19 could run upwards of $42 billion, which would consume more than 40% of the $100 billion fund Congress created to help hospitals and other providers. 
• Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced that 25 community health centers in Kentucky will get $21.7 million from the Department of Health and Human Services to combat covid-19, as part of special appropriations from Congress. His press release has a list of the centers, which received $1.7 million in earlier funding. 
• U.S. Customs and Border Protection said it will detain any shipment of  N95 respirators, surgical masks and gloves and any other key medical equipment to other countries at ports to give the Federal Emergency Management Agency a chance to approve or reject the export, based on U.S. need, reports The Washington Times. “FEMA and CBP are working together to prevent domestic brokers, distributors, and other intermediaries from diverting these critical medical resources overseas,” CBP said in a statement.
• Shelby Martin, a registered respiratory therapist who has worked for UK HealthCare for 20 years, says that in addition to providing critical care, health-care providers are also offering emotional support to covid-19 patients who are not allowed to have visitors, UKNow reports. "We have to be able to be there for these patients and their families," she said. "It is so difficult but necessary that these patients fight this disease away from their loved ones. This is where we step in -- we become their family so that they are not alone."
• Altarum, a nonprofit research and consulting firm, reported Friday that U.S. health care lost 43,000 jobs in the first month of the covid-19 outbreak, at least 500 of them in Eastern Kentucky's Appalachian Regional Healthcare.
• In an effort to not infect his family, emergency room doctor Zach Armstrong is staying in a travel trailer parked outside his Louisville home until the covid-19 outbreak in the city subsides, the Courier Journal reports.

  

  John Prine (Associated Press photo)

• Beshear ended Wednesday's briefing with a recording of "My Old Kentucky Home" as interpreted by singer-songwriter John Prine, who died of covid-19 Tuesday night in Nashville. He vaulted to stardom in 1971 with "Paradise," about a Green River hamlet in Muhlenberg County that was his parents' hometown and was wiped from the earth for a huge coal-fired power plant and surface mines that fed it. The closing stanza presaged his own death:
  When I die let my ashes float down the Green River
  Let my soul roll on up to the Rochester Dam
  I'll be halfway to Heaven with Paradise waitin'
  Just five miles away from wherever I am.