Updates on the coronavirus in Kentucky on Wednesday, March 18:
- The state identified nine more COVID-19 cases, the biggest daily spike yet, and Gov. Andy Beshear suggested there will be bigger spikes: “We’re gonna see new cases every day … and probably in a rapid fashion,” he said at a press conference in which he twice interjected notice of newly reported cases. The new total is 35, after about 500 tests.
- Beshear said a Montgomery County patient who tested positive is out of the hospital and reportedly fully recovered. “These are stores we need to tell,” he said, “because for 80% of people who get this, you’ll be just fine.”
- “In a state with so many people afflicted with serious medical conditions, COVID-19 is much more dangerous,” the Courier Journal reports. “Almost half of adult Kentuckians — nearly 1.6 million people — are considered at risk of serious illness if they were to get COVID-19.”
- On a vote of 90-8, the Senate sent to President Trump a House-passed emergency bill that would provide two weeks’ sick leave at no less than two-thirds of normal pay to people who may have the coronavirus, to encourage them to stay home from work. Among other things, it would also expand family and medical leave and boost unemployment benefits. Tuesday night, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul delayed passage of the bill by forcing a vote on an amendment, which lost 95-3.
- Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday that the 53 Republican senators and the White House would then start drafting another bill with “policy tools to put money quickly and directly into the hands of American families,” then negotiate with Senate Democrats to get a version that can the 60 votes needed to pass. “We know an additional bill of much larger proportions is necessary to meet this crisis,” he said.
- Ford Motor Co. announced that it would close its factories, including two in Louisville, affecting 12,000 workers.
- Toyota Motor Manufacturing Corp. said it would shut its plants Monday and Tuesday, and cancel a scheduled production Saturday at Georgetown, for a thorough cleaning of the plants.
- Kentucky is the focus of a story in Forbes magazine about how rural areas are coping.
- The New York Times has a situation piece from Cynthiana, which had Kentucky’s first identified case of COVID-19 and at one point had half the cases in the state.
- Distiller Pernod Ricard USA said it will produce and donate hand sanitizer to help curb the national shortage; Rabbit Hole Distillery in Louisville will be a manufacturing site.
- Dr. Sean McTigue, a pediatric infectious-disease specialist and UK HealthCare’s medical director for pediatric infection prevention and control, said in a news release that children should be told that the risk to them is very low: “In the largest study of COVID-19 patients, only 2% of all identified infections were in children, and the vast majority of these were asymptomatic or very mild. To date, there have been no deaths reported worldwide in children.”
(Kentucky Health News is an independent news service of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, based in the School of Journalism and Media at the University of Kentucky, with support from the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky.)
