As news develops about the coronavirus and its covid-19 disease, this item may be updated. Official state guidance is at kycovid19.ky.gov.
By Melissa Patrick
Kentucky Health News
Gov. Andy Beshear moved up the date for Kentucky to begin the second phase of its reopening, announcing Thursday that Kentucky's restaurants can reopen May 22 at one-third capacity, and a goal of limited child care on June 15.
He said restaurants will be allowed unlimited outdoor seating as long as they keep tables six feet apart, the standard social-distance guideline.
"I know this isn't the capacity that our restaurants probably want, but the studies that we look at show that we've got to be really careful about this step," Beshear said at his daily briefing. "This allows it to be open for Memorial Day weekend, but please be careful. . . . This is the best compromise between public health and making sure we can restart this part of the economy."
Beshear has been under pressure from Kentucky restaurants, especially in Louisville, because Indiana has allowed its restaurants to reopen. He noted that Indiana and Tennessee have reopened restaurants, but said his conversations with Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine "were a big part of it." Ohio will open its restaurants before Kentucky does, and that would likely have brought the same sort of complaints from Northern Kentucky that have been heard in Louisville.
"We had planned it for a little bit later, but I think this is partial harm reduction," Beshear said. He also cited "the belief that those that we have worked with sincerely want to do this right and only want to re-open if they can do it right. Many will find that they won't be ready for that date. Don't rush."
He added that it's important for restaurants to meet their industry-specific guidance, which will be forthcoming, and the 10 state requirements for opening, including such things as thorough, repeated cleaning; mask-wearing; taking on-site temperature checks of employees; making sure there is adequate hand cleaning access; and having a testing plan for employees with elevated temperatures.
"These aren't easy," Beshear said, adding later, "If we're gonna do this, we're gonna do it safe."
Beshear also announced that movie theaters and fitness centers will be able to reopen June 1, campgrounds will be able to reopen June 11, and some child care with reduced capacity and potentially low-touch, outdoor youth sports on June 15. But he said that wasn't guaranteed.
“This is a goal, a goal, we are pushing for,” he said. “We want to have a safe plan for child care, knowing that it is such a challenge for folks. I will tell you that it will be significantly reduced capacity and it will be very monitored to make sure that it’s safe.”
The gradual reopening of businesses that will begin Monday has increased calls to reopen child-care centers, but Beshear has said that would be risky. Unemployed people who get called back to work but can't find child care will be allowed to keep getting unemployment benefits.
Beshear said bars and groups of 50 or more people may be able to open in July. Groups of 10 or fewer will be able to gather on May 25.
Beshear is accelerating his reopening of the state's economy, even though Kentucky hasn't met the benchmarks that he laid out about three weeks ago, Joe Sonka reports for the Louisville Courier Journal, weaving together several threads pursued by Kentucky Health News and the Lexington Herald-Leader in the last two weeks, and providing more research and analysis.
Kentucky Health News
Gov. Andy Beshear moved up the date for Kentucky to begin the second phase of its reopening, announcing Thursday that Kentucky's restaurants can reopen May 22 at one-third capacity, and a goal of limited child care on June 15.
He said restaurants will be allowed unlimited outdoor seating as long as they keep tables six feet apart, the standard social-distance guideline.
"I know this isn't the capacity that our restaurants probably want, but the studies that we look at show that we've got to be really careful about this step," Beshear said at his daily briefing. "This allows it to be open for Memorial Day weekend, but please be careful. . . . This is the best compromise between public health and making sure we can restart this part of the economy."
Beshear has been under pressure from Kentucky restaurants, especially in Louisville, because Indiana has allowed its restaurants to reopen. He noted that Indiana and Tennessee have reopened restaurants, but said his conversations with Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine "were a big part of it." Ohio will open its restaurants before Kentucky does, and that would likely have brought the same sort of complaints from Northern Kentucky that have been heard in Louisville.
"We had planned it for a little bit later, but I think this is partial harm reduction," Beshear said. He also cited "the belief that those that we have worked with sincerely want to do this right and only want to re-open if they can do it right. Many will find that they won't be ready for that date. Don't rush."
He added that it's important for restaurants to meet their industry-specific guidance, which will be forthcoming, and the 10 state requirements for opening, including such things as thorough, repeated cleaning; mask-wearing; taking on-site temperature checks of employees; making sure there is adequate hand cleaning access; and having a testing plan for employees with elevated temperatures.
"These aren't easy," Beshear said, adding later, "If we're gonna do this, we're gonna do it safe."
Beshear also announced that movie theaters and fitness centers will be able to reopen June 1, campgrounds will be able to reopen June 11, and some child care with reduced capacity and potentially low-touch, outdoor youth sports on June 15. But he said that wasn't guaranteed.
“This is a goal, a goal, we are pushing for,” he said. “We want to have a safe plan for child care, knowing that it is such a challenge for folks. I will tell you that it will be significantly reduced capacity and it will be very monitored to make sure that it’s safe.”
The gradual reopening of businesses that will begin Monday has increased calls to reopen child-care centers, but Beshear has said that would be risky. Unemployed people who get called back to work but can't find child care will be allowed to keep getting unemployment benefits.
Beshear said bars and groups of 50 or more people may be able to open in July. Groups of 10 or fewer will be able to gather on May 25.
Beshear is accelerating his reopening of the state's economy, even though Kentucky hasn't met the benchmarks that he laid out about three weeks ago, Joe Sonka reports for the Louisville Courier Journal, weaving together several threads pursued by Kentucky Health News and the Lexington Herald-Leader in the last two weeks, and providing more research and analysis.
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Bloomberg chart shows positive tests in red and pink,
and negative tests in grays. Flu-like illness is shown by
bars across bottom. Gray rectangle marks last two weeks. |
The study concludes that if Louisville was able to "practice stronger social-distancing strategies, we could safely open in early June. Therefore, taking new and more effective measures can make a manageable early-June opening more likely." It said "decreasing the current social-distancing measures without efforts in regard to testing, isolating, and contact tracing can move us to an unstable status which can be catastrophic."
Dr. Paul McKinney, director of U of L's Center for Health Hazards Preparedness and co-author of the study, told Sonka that Beshear’s reopening plan likely isn’t perfect, "but it's a very reasonable plan, I think, to do it in steps. . . . The good thing about the staged plan is that if you find we're going too fast, you put the brakes on there. Rather than saying 'We're closing everything down again,' no, 'We're just stopping where we are and not moving any further'."
Beshear said Thursday, "Our goal in having a gradual plan is to be able to pause. And that would be our first step. If we saw a spike, we would pause where we are. We would look at where we've seen them, what type of businesses that we have; we would try to be surgical on those areas."
The governor says another reason the state can start reopening is it will be able to test 2 percent of its population each month, as federal guidelines call for.
He spent a fair amount of time Thursday discussing the state's increased capacity for testing, saying it would soon be able to do 30,000 tests a week. So far the state has only confirmed tests of 81,391 people; Beshear said the actual number is higher, since some labs have not been reporting negative results.
Kentucky now has at least 72 covid-19 testing locations, listed on the kycovid19.ky.gov website. Beshear announced a new partnership with First Care Clinics, which can now provide tests at 13 locations across the state, seven days a week, at no cost.
"Folks, this is big news," Beshear said. "There’s now no excuse" to not get a test. "Now we all have the tools to do the right thing and protect one another."
Politics: Some think Beshear isn't moving fast enough. U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, an ophthalmologist by trade, told Louisville's WDRB-TV that the governor is “drunk with power” and the state is living under the “dictatorship of Beshear” when its economy needs to reopen completely.
Asked to reply, Beshear said, "There is still some partisanship and some politics going on right now; I'm just not doing it. . . . I look forward to getting to the day when we don’t have an emergency."
Prisons: Beshear's office said someone made a mistake by releasing a prison inmate before knowing the result of his coronavirus test, which turned out to be positive. Now Michael Gene Welch, who has no symptoms. is back at the Green River Correctional Complex for at least weeks -- until he can test negative for the virus twice in at least 24 hours, reports John Cheves of the Herald-Leader.
Welch's fiance, who picked him up and "spent hours in confined spaces with him Tuesday before returning home to her family — including her 84-year-old mother — wants to know how this went wrong," Cheves writes. Beshear spokeswoman Crystal Staley told him, "We are investigating the circumstances that led up to the release and will take any and all appropriate action.
Cheves also reports about the coronavirus outbreak at the Federal Medical Center in Lexington where local officials have said the "prison administrators have been unresponsive to questions" from both the mayor's office and the local health department and inmates tell him they are "sitting ducks."
In other covid-19 news Thursday:
- Beshear announced 208 new coronavirus cases in the state, for an adjusted total of 6,128. Counties with five or more new cases include: Jefferson, 45; Warren, 41; Fayette, 22; Daviess, 12; Kenton and Logan, nine each; Scott, eight; and Allen, six. Click here for the summary.
- He said 356 Kentuckians are hospitalized with the disease, 199 of them in intensive care, and 2,177 have recovered.
- Eleven more deaths were reported, raising the state's toll to 294. All were from from adjoining counties from Bowling Green to Louisville. Five were from tiny Edmonson County: two women, 80 and 97, and three men, 92, 89 and 86; a 73-year-old man from Warren County; two men in Butler County, 94 and 62; a Grayson County woman, 87; a Hardin County man, 66; and a Jefferson County man, 78.
- Beshear said eight of the deaths were in long-term-care facilities, which have lost 165 residents and two employees to covid-19. In all, 863 residents and 353 staff have tested positive for the virus, in 78 facilities. Click here for a list.
- As of Wednesday, five facilities had 10 or more resident deaths from covid-19: Rosedale Green in Kenton County, with 20 deaths, and 63 residents and 22 staff with positive tests; Ridgewood Terrace Nursing Home in Hopkins County, with 19 deaths and 61 residents and 21 staff testing positive; Mills Health and Rehab in Graves County, 16 deaths and 65 residents and 31 positive staff; Treyton Oak Towers in Louisville, 15 deaths, 35 positive residents and 15 positive staff; and Jackson Manor in Annville, with 10 deaths, 40 positive residents and 20 positive staff. WKYT-TV reports there are now 12 deaths at Jackson Manor, owned by Signature HealthCare, the state's largest nursing-home operator. It also has Summit Manor in Columbia, which has had nine resident deaths and the only two staff deaths in the state, and 65 positive residents and 17 positive staff.
- Beshear said the Federal Emergency Management Agency will deliver a 14-day supply of personal protective gear to all certified nursing homes.
- He said the many deaths of people in long-term care may have made people think "this isn't something people of all ages can get," so he read the ages of younger people on the list of news cases: "39, 27, 36, 35, 26, 28, 38, 36, 26, 33, 32, 41, 34, 27, 25, 44, 3, 51, 39, 25, 41, 28, 25, 27, 39, 24, 29, 22, 35, 14, 15, 3, 34, 19, 28, 25, 16. So let’s make sure that we remember . . . that it’s still out there and it’s still dangerous, and misinformation can be deadly."
- Beshear announced that Kentucky will get $10.3 million for testing by 25 health centers funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration. Click here for a list.
- He cautioned against covid-19 scammers, saying he has heard Kentuckians are getting calls threatening to disconnect utilities without immediate payment. He noted that he had issued a order prohibiting disconnections for non-payment and fees for late payments. If you suspect a scam, call the Consumer Protection Hotline at 888-432-9257 or fill out a complaint on ag.ky.gov/scams.
- Dr. John Barton, a leading authority on high-risk obstetrics at Baptist Health in Lexington, told John Clay of the Herald-Leader that there is still much to learn about the effects of covid-19 and pregnancy, and his best advice is to use common sense.
- UPS is giving $100,000 to the University of Louisville to fund promising research into blocking the coronavirus from infecting human cells. Mike Stunson of the Herald-Leader wrote about this research, which involves an aptamer, a synthetic DNA and originally developed as a cancer treatment, on April 22.
- Kentucky Health News has republished a column by Becky Barnes, editor of The Cynthiana Democrat, "I will wear a mask . . . for you." Barnes has worked at the paper for 44 years and in early March, when Harrison County had Kentucky's first case of covid-19, she published a special edition about it, giving information that dispelled rumors.
- The Cooperative Extension Service is providing guidelines to farmers to help them safely welcome immigrants with H-2A work visas back to their farms in the midst of the pandemic. "Producers know that if even one person in their operation contracts the virus, it could shutter their entire enterprise for at least two weeks," Katie Pratt reports for the University of Kentucky, noting that about 780 Kentucky producers hired more than 8,300 H 2-A workers in 2019. “The packets included covid-19 information and guidance, best health practices and producer guidelines, all translated into Spanish,” Beau Neal, agriculture and natural resources extension agent from Daviess County, told Pratt. “I also included some guidelines for the employers to maintain a healthy workplace environment for all H-2A employees. Doing this helps those employees and their coworkers stay safe and healthy, and to be on the same page as the producer in developing a plan moving forward to adhere to proper health guidelines in their work environment."
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