Beshear urges churches not to resume in-person services unless ready, says people returning to work should schedule a virus test

Gene Hornback, 85, of Versailles spent three weeks on a ventilator at Baptist Health Lexington, and his wife Elaine, left, was also admitted March 30. He was released to rehabilitattion Friday; she had a lighter case and was already home. Their daughter, Dawn Hornback Mullican, said in a Baptist Health news release that the battle with covid-19 has given her mother “new purpose in life.” She also said, “They’re both looking at it like they’ve had the greatest gift given to them, which is more time together.”

As news develops about the coronavirus and its covid-19 disease, this item will be updated. Official state guidance is at kycovid19.ky.gov.

With churches in Kentucky able to resume in-person worship services 10 days earlier than expected, under a court ruling, Gov. Andy Beshear pleaded with them Saturday to not open unless they are ready to follow the guidelines he issued Friday.

"People, take your time," he said at his daily briefing. "You don’t want your house of worship to be a place where the coronavirus is spread. . . . Make sure that you are ready if you have church this Sunday. Make sure you follow all of these rules."

Beshear cited examples of religious services in Kentucky and elsewhere that led to outbreaks of covid-19 and deaths. "If you haven’t read through all the guidance and you can't meet it, don’t come back just to come back," he said. "Make sure your sanctuary is just that, a place of safety and comfort."

He said his Beargrass Christian Church in Louisville won't have in-person services until June, and asked that faith leaders not be pressured to have them.

"My faith is critically important to me," he said, reciting some familiar points. "I hope you’ve heard me talk about my faith in a way that you know that. So, we never set out to stop anything specific related to religion; we were just trying to save lives by stopping groups of people coming together for anything."

Noting that courts in other states have allowed such bans to apply to houses of worship, he said, "For those that are more interested in courts’ wins and losses, and might be celebrating, I really hope, I really hope, that these rulings don’t have some people going back faster than they should, not doing everything that needs to be done, and causing the spread of this virus."

He added, "Since this has started, I’ve been done with politics. I’m not counting wins and losses; I’m counting the number of lives and the number of deaths I have to announce every day, and I hope that the actions of trying to speed this up by two weeks don’t result in more people being lost."

Beshear thanked churches that cooperated, and said, “If I’m disappointed about one thing, it’s that two total churches in this state took the attention away from 7,000 other ones” that gave up in-person services.

As churches prepare to resume in-person services, they are being told not to sing, because singing can create aerosols that spread the virus. Tennessee pastor Ken Boer of The Gospel Coalition, a group of evangelical churches in the Reformed tradition, discusses the risks in an article for Kentucky Today, a publication of the Kentucky Baptist Convention.

Beshear again pleaded with Kentuckians to sign up for testing, so the state can meet the federal guideline of testing 2 percent of its population each month. He said most testing sites will accept anyone, and “If you’re going back to work in the next couple of weeks I’d recommend that you go get a test.” Earlier, he said, “The more people you’re around and the longer you’re around them, the more opportunity this has to spread to you.”

Asked what will happen to the old "healthy at home" mantra now that the new one is "healthy at work," he said. “The more people we work with and the longer we’re there the more we should just come home.”

In other covid-19 news Saturday:

• As factories, retail stores and other businesses prepare to reopen Monday, Beshear and Health Commissioner Steven Stack exhorted Kentuckians to wear masks, maintain social distancing and take other precautions to prevent a resurgence of covid-19. “That second spike would shut down our economy again and more important than that, we would lose more Kentuckians,” Beshear said.
• Stack said that if not Beshear's orders and Kentuckians following them, “We could have been standing here today talking about tens of thousands of Kentuckians who have died from the coronavirus. . . . We have done a wonderful job . . . This is exactly when people start to get complacent.”
• He added, “There has never been a time more important than now … for you to follow the guidelines. . . . This is exactly the time, when the weather starts getting nice and people start going outside and are really tried of having these restrictions … We really have to make sure we pull together.”
• Beshear announced the government offices can reopen May 18.
• He reported 158 new cases, for an adjusted total of 6,440; he said at least 86,900 people had been tested, and at least 2,308 have recovered.
• He reported six more deaths, for a total of 304: a 63-year-old man in Jefferson County, a 92-year-old woman in Meade County and four in Graves County: men 76 and 81, and women 90 and 95.
• While most covid-19 deaths are of seniors, 30% of cases are in people aged 20 to 40, and 46% are in those 40-70, Beshear said, reading some young examples, including a 17-year-old in McCreary County, a 15-year-old boy in Jefferson County, and a 1-year-old in Knox County. Holding up his mask, he said. "When I say I wear this to protect my kids, I mean it."
• The number of covid-19 patients in intensive care rose again, to 226, as it has daily for the last three weeks. “We’re watching this,” Beshear said, then showed a video of Gene Hornback, 85, of Versailles, being discharged from a hospital after 39 days, including more than three weeks on a ventilator. He quoted one of Hornback's nurses from a Baptist Health news release: “He had all the odds against him and he still beat the virus.”
• Counties with five or more new cases were Jefferson, 31; Fayette, 27; Warren, 18; Kenton, 11; Logan, 11; Boone, 7; Jessamine, 5; and Shelby, 5.
• Stack said 7.8% of the workers at the Perdue Farms chicken-processing plant at Cromwell in Ohio County tested positive, "not as bad as we thought it could be." He said the plant is working with health departments in three counties.
• Health-department directors are concerned that they haven't been in on the planning for a massive effort to trace the contacts of people who test positive for the virus and get them to self-quarantine, reports Alex Acquisto of the Lexington Herald-Leader: "It’s a slight that, when colored by Kentucky’s long history of under-funding its public health departments, stings maybe more than it should, some said."
• To a complaint that inmates at the Green River Correctional Complex in Central City aren't being told their test results, Beshear said that if they haven't been told, they would be.
• On Jan. 22, the day after the virus was first detected in the United States, the owner of the last major factory making N95 respirator masks offered to make millions of masks for the federal government, but his offer was not accepted, Aaron Davis of The Washington Post reports.
• The Miami Herald reports, "Isolation, unemployment and fear brought on by the coronavirus could result in 75,000 “deaths of despair” years after the worst of the pandemic is over, a new study suggests. The number of deaths of despair could range between 27,000 and 154,000 from 2020 to 2029, depending on the rate of economic recovery, Well Being Trust reported."