Health

As everything in Kentucky opens at some capacity on Monday, Beshear also urged Kentuckians to keep 6 feet of social distance and decrease their daily activities by half — things he said they will need to do until a vaccine is readily available.

eshear recently said that his decisions about the virus would be guided more by hospital data than new cases. The state's daily report said 376 Kentuckians were hospitalized for COVID-19 and 70 of them are in intensive care. Those figures have been increasing since the 339 and 64 reported Friday.

"... what kind of a human being says, when told point-blank that the person with whom he's in conversation knows people who have died or become gravely ill, responds that such people must have had underlying conditions? What's his point? That they deserved to die?"

The governor said the state continues to be on a manageable plateau when it comes to new cases, and the state has plenty of hospital beds and intensive care unit beds available, noting that  hospital occupancy is around 50 percent and its intensive-care capacity is around 70 percent.

As of Monday, there were 41 people in the county with active coronavirus and 134 people who had recovered.

During interviews in a Lexington Wal-Mart parking lot, most who weren't wearing a mask also didn't want to be interviewed, and of the few who did, most didn't want to share their name. But every person who had a mask on and was asked for an interview agreed to it and all but one gave their name.

Before the coronavirus pandemic, 41% percent of Kentucky's nursing homes were cited for infection-control deficiencies.

As the college football season approaches, some schools, including the University of Kentucky, aren't testing players "unless they display symptoms or are discovered to have been near an infected person." Instead, they're requiring players to take antibody tests.

Friday's numbers raised the state's case total to 13,454. While Beshear has said he will base his reopening decisions more on hospitalizations than daily case numbers, his press release did not mention those numbers.

There were no new cases reported Thursday, following an increase of six cases on Wednesday.

To the many who aren't wearing masks, Beshear said, "We need you to reconsider. It's not a test of your manhood, whether you wear a mask or not. I think it's a test of your compassion, maybe even your faith if you're willing to wear one of these to protect a fellow human being. Remember, we all have a duty to each other, even folks we've never met."

The health department urged local residents to be aware the virus is still active and requires safety measures to help curb its spread.