Cases and positive-test rate continue to surge; Beshear says if cases keep increasing, Kentucky hospitals “will end up overrun”

Kentucky Health News

Gov. Andy Beshear announced 2,342 new cases of the novel coronavirus in Kentucky on Thursday, the second highest day yet, and warned that Kentucky hospitals are having difficulty dealing with it.

“This virus continues to spread at such an alarming rate,” Beshear said at his daily news conference, reminding Kentuckians that each of those cases represents a new person who has been infected with the virus.

He also announced that the share of Kentuckians testing positive for the virus in the past seven days has gone up again, to 8.29%, another record for the period since testing became widely available.

“This is a high positivity rate with an abundance of testing, which means that the virus is at an all-time high in its spread,” the governor said.

Hospitalizations for covid-19 also hit another all-time high, 1,311, up 37 from yesterday, and patients in the intensive care and on ventilators have also inched up since yesterday, by two in the ICU, to 299, with 163 if those patients on a ventilator, up by 12.

Beshear said the state is seeing “a strain on a number of our hospital systems,” which are monitoring it very closely. And while the state is likely to run out of nurses and doctors before it runs out of hospital beds, he said, “We are seeing some signs that our hospital system could be overrun . . . If cases keep increasing at the rate they are now, we will end up overrun. You’re seeing that in other states.”

Today, Beshear announced 94 of the state’s 120 counties are in the “red zone,” which means a county has had at least 25 new cases per 100,000 residents in the last seven days. That’s up from 80 counties last week.

Each Thursday, the governor is asking counties in the red zone to follow a set of community and school recommendations to slow the spread of the virus.

Among other things, the red-zone reduction recommendations ask people to not eat in restaurants, to allow employees to work from home when possible, and to not host gatherings of any size. School recommendations call on schools in these hard-hit counties to move to virtual learning only. Long-term care facilities also have a set of recommendations to follow if they are located in a red zone.

“Remember, what this is supposed to do is to provide a way for these communities, 94 of them, to come together, with government,  business, school system, everybody, long-term care, working together in a unified effort to stop the spread of this virus,” Beshear said.

Frankfort and Franklin County are in the red zone, so Beshear said state government will follow the recommendations next week. “We are going to live up to what we’re asking other people to do,” he said.

Asked if he plans on turning these recommendations into mandates, or if he is willing to shut down non-essential businesses again for a couple of weeks to stop this surge of cases, especially after the Kentucky Supreme Court unanimously upheld his authority to do so, Beshear again said he was not looking to add new mandates, though “We are committed to taking actions as we need to,” and called for better compliance with the existing ones.

“Right now, we’ve got to get more buy-in from people for current mandates, for later ones to work,” he said.

Asked if rural Kentucky counties would have access to the new Pfizer Inc. vaccine when it becomes available, because it requires ultra-cold storage units, which are reported to cost up to $15,000 and aren’t readily available in many rural hospitals, Beshear said vaccine distribution plans are a “work in progress” but “We need to get them to those that need them the most, that are the most vulnerable. And we’re gonna make sure that happens in rural populations just as soon as it happens in urban populations.” Other vaccines are under development.

Beshear announced 18 more people had died from covid-19, bringing the number of Kentuckians who have died from the disease to 1,622.