Beshear tries to jawbone uncooperative school districts

Beshear tries to jawbone uncooperative school districts into following his recommendation, noting 785 new cases today

Kentucky Health News
By Melissa Patrick and Al Cross

Even after reporting a record number of cases yesterday, and an above-average number today, Gov. Andy Beshear said the addition of 785 more cases likely won’t push the state into an exponential increase this week, similar to what the state was seeing just a few weeks ago.

“It means that wearing a facial covering is working, other steps are working,” Beshear said. “But we need you to stick with it, and we cannot make decisions that are ultimately going to cause a significant spread right now because that’s going to make everything we want to do that much harder.”

Beshear spoke as some school districts are beginning in-person instruction, contrary to his recommendation that they delay it until Sept. 28, and he called out some of them.

More than once, he pointed to Warren County, a coronavirus hotspot, where the county and Bowling Green districts are planning to open schools Aug. 24. The districts’ boards are to meet Friday and Monday, respectively. Aaron Mudd reports for the Bowling Green Daily News.

Beshear pointed out that school-aged children accounted for six of the 29 new cases in Warren County today, and in the last three weeks, 86 children in the county had tested positive, though children aren’t tested as often as adults.

“That is incredibly concerning, and I hope that in making decisions we would see that county . . . ultimately reach good decisions where we are patient enough to make those good plans to reopen our schools work at a time when they can work.”

Beshear noted that the White House Coronavirus Task Force considers Warren the second hottest county in Kentucky for uncontrolled spread of the virus, with a positive-test rate of 10% or more.

He also pointed to Hardin County, where six of 21 new cases today were school-aged children. The county school board voted 4-1 in Elizabethtown Wednesday evening to allow in-person instruction to resume starting Aug. 24, Shellie Sylvestri reports for Louisville’s WAVE-TV.  The schools will also offer online learning.

Lexington Christian Academy, a private school in Fayette County with more than 1,100 students, also plans to open with in-person learning next week, Valarie Honeycutt Spears reports for the Lexington Herald-Leader.

Parents in Madison County said in a poll that they wanted schools to open on schedule, but after an “emergency” session with state officials, the school board voted Thursday night to delay opening until Sept. 2 and no mandate in-person instruction until Sept. 28, “School board members said after an emergency meeting with officials of the Kentucky Department of Education, they felt like their hands were tied.”

Beshear said many more Kentucky children could be positive for the virus since young people are often not tested. “We are seeing an explosion of positive tests amongst our young people,” he said. “Let’s make sure that the decisions we make set us up for actual success and don’t set us back as a state, and as I’ve said before let’s not experiment with the health of our children.”

About 40 percent of people with coronavirus infections have no symptoms, but can still spread the virus. Beshear mentioned a  report that shows nationwide, about 100,000 children tested positive for the virus during the last couple weeks of July.

And to those who say that the virus only harms people of a certain age, making it safe to send children back to school, Beshear stressed that children can spread the disease to their teachers, staff and caretakers, who are often grandparents. Also, he said, the greater the exposure, the more opportunity kids have for a bad outcome, and the long-term ramifications of the virus are still unknown.

Some school superintendents said this week that they don’t have access to county-level positivity rates to help them make re-opening decisions. Asked about that, Beshear said county-level rates in many small counties would have a large margin of error due to lack of testing, but acknowledged that a regional look, using data from several adjoining counties, might work.

However, he added that Dr. Deborah Birx, the task force’s response coordinator, told him during her recent visit to Kentucky that because the state had half its counties in the task force’s danger zones, this was a statewide problem that needed statewide steps.  Latest report shows that 13 counties are in the red zone and 34 are in the yellow zone.

“I believe overall where we are in the state right now,” he said, “just about any school district is going to have a real challenge.”

Health Commissioner Steven Stack displayed a graph of Georgia’s and Kentucky’s cases over time, which he said shows how Kentucky’s “measured and phased” approach has allowed Kentucky to flatten its case curve, compared to the exponential increase in cases in Georgia, which nevertheless opened schools this month.

Chart from divoc-91.com website, displayed by Health Commissioner Stack
“I think what we see is that the mask mandate is what impacted and has hopefully flattened that curve, and we’ll see as this week ends where our totals fall,” Stack said, adding that there has much debate about masks in Georgia and “I think they are seeing the consequences of not following that simple public health guidance, to use these masks.”