Health

Beshear largely rebuffed Republican legislators' suggestions that his limits on activity be reduced in areas that have low infection rates, saying the virus can spread too quickly for that.

For now, Kentucky limits bars and restaurants to 50% capacity and allows gatherings of up to 50 people. But the governor said Sunday that he would have to take action in response to a surge of daily new cases, particularly the new record set Sunday.

Sunday's 979 new cases pushed the state's seven-day rolling average to 547 cases, up from 447 yesterday; it has more than doubled in the last two weeks. Beshear said 30 of Sunday's new cases were in children under age 5.

“We’ve got to be careful. We’ve got to make sure that we are wearing our facial coverings, because today’s cases are a reflection of 14 days ago, before we mandated those. This is what it’s going to take if we want to save our economy and save lives and get our kids back in school; it’s really that simple.” — Gov. Andy Beshear

The National Rural Health Association wants to make it easier for struggling rural hospitals to qualify for a designation that gets them extra reimbursements from Medicare and Medicaid in return for limiting their beds, services and length of patient stays.

The governor again noted the elevated number of young children who have tested positive: 10 in Friday's list of new cases were under 5, and five were 1 or younger.