As Kentucky looks forward to another round of fine spring weather, Gov. Andy Beshear is imploring Kentuckians to stay at home, saying that home is the best place to not get the coronavirus and also the best place to not spread it.
“It’s going to be a beautiful weekend again, and we cannot repeat last weekend where we saw a lot of crowds come together,” he said at his daily press conference. “And so as the weather gets nicer, I need you to be even stronger to make sure that we are doing what it takes.”
Beshear stressed that practicing social distancing is the one part of the show that Kentuckians can run in this time of uncertainty and that by doing this, they will reduce the spread of this virus.
“This is the one part that is entirely in our control, where we as Kentuckians without any help from the federal government or anybody else can slow the spread of this virus, can make sure we have the health-care capacity we need by decreasing the number of cases over time or at least lessening them,” he said. “This is the best way that you as an individual can help in this fight. … I need you, we as a state need you; your actions are so important.”
Beshear showed a recent White House graph, which President Trump has used, to demonstrate the importance of social distancing and the reason for community mitigation measures to limit the spread of the virus. It showed upwards of 2.2 million deaths from COVID-19 with “community mitigation” interventions and between 100,000 and 240,000 deaths with them.
He then showed a graph translating the White House model to Kentucky, showing that the state would have between 21,000 and 29,000 deaths without any mitigation, and 1,300 to 3,200 deaths with them.
Beshear called the White House modeling an “optimistic scenario” and cautioned that modeling being done by the state, which he would soon share, is “more pessimistic” and “will be tough for people to see.” He added, “Our concerns are that this virus can spread faster than this and its toll may be greater than this.”
Then the governor painted a grim picture of what can happen when Kentuckians don’t practice social distancing, reading from a Hopkins County Health Department document that he said had been slightly edited:
Hopkins County has been hit really, really hard. We know the community is reeling. … We had a church that had a preacher from Texas come down to Dawson’s Springs March 15 and 16 for a revival at another church. When he left multiple families were sick. The church placed a post on social media that those people did not have the corona, they just had the flu. According to several people interviewed, they were encouraged not to self-quarantined and still come to church. They did not practice social distancing at the revival. Hopkins County now has 24 cases, hundreds of contacts and two deaths with an epidemiological link to this revival. We’ve additionally had cases in Muhlenberg, Clark and Warren counties related to it as well. Also we have a nursing home with a case, a business with a potential outbreak from this one revival, a healthcare facility and an ambulance service that has had multiple personnel affected and we closed a hospital unit and opened up a COVID unit. This has spread throughout our community.
“So to anybody who is not listening to the recommendations, to anybody that is still trying to hold — it’s not just a service, but a meeting — notice what one, one meeting can do and it spreads far beyond those that are there,” Beshear said.
“But because a couple of leaders in a different part of the community decided that they were going to ignore the guidance, they have put the entire community at risk,” he said. “You can’t be doing that. You absolutely can’t be doing that. The ramifications when we don’t follow this end up being widespread and they hurt people that didn’t make that choice, they didn’t make that choice and they potentially cut down on the resources to protect other people. So let’s do better. Let’s be better.”
Other news about the coronavirus and its COVID-19 disease included:
- Kentucky reports 93 new cases and two more deaths, a 60-year-old male from Davis County and a 76-year-old female from Hopkins County. Beshear said Kentucky has 20 confirmed deaths to date from COVID-19.
- Beshear said Kentucky continues to work to increase its number of hospital beds, ICU beds and ventilators. He said right now the state has 18,500 hospital beds, 1,300 ICU beds and 1,352 ventilators. He said the state has plans that would allow for an additional 8,000 hospital beds, with 1,600 of them in hotels that could be used for low-acuity patients. He said the state had secured an additional 70 ventilators, and was trying to double its amount.
- He added that the state is working every day to secure more testing and that the governor’s office is running an audit to determine how many tests have been completed in outside labs. He said at this time he could confirm more than 10,000 test have been completed. “I will say that every two steps forward, we do have a step back and oftentimes that’s because the testing kits and the personal protective equipment that we expect to come to us is diverted and routed somewhere else or that the agreements are in place and we should have them and a couple of days before, it just doesn’t happen,” he said, adding that his is happening all around the country.
- John Benton, deputy secretary of the Kentucky Education and Workforce Development Cabinet, continued to ask for patience as they work to take care of the influx of unemployment insurance claims. He encouraged most people to use kcc.ky.gov so that those who really need to speak to someone can get through to the call-center. Beshear said 40,000 acceptance letters were sent last night to many who had been told at first that they didn’t qualify.
- The Kentucky National Guard has been deployed to help with food banks in four locations.
- Beshear and Health Commissioner Dr. Steven Stack both cautioned people to be wary of any pop-up COVID-19 testing site that asked for cash in exchange for a test. They said any testing site in Kentucky should be working with the state Department of Public Health.
- “Among those lucky enough to have access to food and safe housing, and not be sickened by COVID-19, there are indicators that the pandemic itself, and the massive shutdown it has triggered, is forcing the adoption of more-healthful behaviors,” Dr. Daphne Miller, a family physician and author, writes for The Washington Post. She says many are exercising more, spending more time with nature, eating out less and cooking more from scratch at home. Also, mental-health apps are showing a dramatic increase in downloads.
- Blood-donation centers across the nation are ramping up efforts to collect plasma from people who have recovered from COVID-19 in hopes it can be used to save the lives of others infected with the virus, JoNel Aleccia reports for Kaiser Health News. “The treatment is not a sure thing,” she writes, adding that studies show injecting the plasma from those who have recovered into those who are still suffering has had some success in reducing symptoms and death in past outbreaks, but has not been proven to be effective in clinical trials.
- Betty Nunn, a patient at Norton HealthCare in Louisville, tells Deborah Yetter of the Louisville Courier Journal that she was very happy with her decision to do a telehealth visit, which she did through an app on her phone. “I was really happy with it,” she said. “I would do it again.” This sentiment comes as Kentucky primary care providers and behavioral health providers transition to caring for their patients through telehealth during the COVID-19 outbreak.
Melissa Patrick is a reporter for Kentucky Health News, 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. She has received several competitive fellowships, including the 2016-17 Nursing and Health Care Workforce Media Fellow of the Center for Health, Media & Policy, which allowed her to focus on and write about nursing workforce issues in Kentucky; and the year-long Association of Health Care Journalists 2017-18 Regional Health Journalism Program fellowship. She is a former registered nurse and holds degrees in journalism and community leadership and development from UK.
