Beshear says 3M should license its patent for N95 masks; UK will put field hospital in football practice facility; research shows best materials for making homemade masks

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

• Gov. Andy Beshear called on 3M Corp. to temporarily license its patent for the badly needed N95 respirator mask so other companies can make it, and President Trump invoked the Defense Production Act “to ensure the federal government acquires more N95s,” the Louisville Courier Journal reports.
• The University of Kentucky said it would convert its football practice facility, Nutter Fieldhouse, into a 400-bed field hospital.
• UK researchers and faculty have formed a workgroup “to focus on advising covid-19 patient care and clinical trials based on emerging research and potential treatment options,” UK says.
• “Four in 10 Americans are not properly allowing disinfectant sprays and wipes to kill the viruses and germs that can make us sick,” says the American Cleaning Institute, citing a poll it commissioned.
• Stomach pain, diarrhea, nausea without vomiting and loss of smell could indicate you have the virus, Louisville’s health director says.
• Music can help people deal with the stress caused by isolation and other ramifications of the coronavirus, an Ohio State professor says.
• With the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expected to recommend that Americans wear masks in public, the town of Midway, population 1,700, is rounding up volunteers to make them.
• The type of fabric used in homemade masks “is key to their effectiveness, according to tests performed at Wake Forest Baptist Health,” it says in a news release. “The best-performing design was constructed of two layers of high-quality, heavyweight “quilter’s cotton” with a thread count of 180 or more, and those with especially tight weave and thicker thread such as batiks. A double-layer mask with a simple cotton outer layer and an inner layer of flannel also performed well. . . . The inferior performers consisted of single-layer masks or double-layer designs of lower quality, lightweight cotton.”
• The Lexington Herald-Leader and the Courier Journal did front-page stories on the Dawson Springs church whose revival sparked a covid-19 outbreak in Hopkins and other counties.
• A Northern Kentucky woman is suing Beshear and Attorney General Daniel Cameron in federal court, challenging Beshear’s order that people entering Kentucky from other states must quarantine themselves for 14 days.
• “A Lexington-based uniform company that provides N95 masks to police has been accused of price gouging by two Arizona lawmakers,” the Herald-Leader reports. Galls, a uniform, equipment and gear store, was targeted in a letter to U.S. Attorney General William Barr Wednesday. “Galls provides masks to Phoenix’s police and fire departments, according to a letter posted online by Scripps.”