FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) - Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear on Friday embraced plans by the White House to lift restrictions brought on by the coronavirus, but said the state must increase its testing capacity to get there.
President Trump this week detailed a set of guidelines for easing restrictions over a span of several weeks in places that have robust testing and are seeing a decrease in COVID-19 cases.
Beshear, who has spent weeks urging residents to stay home, said he agreed with the White House guidelines, including using a 14-day decrease in cases as a threshold to begin opening businesses back up.
“I don’t know what the rhetoric is going to be out there, or what’s going to be said or tweeted, but the actual contents of this document have a whole lot of what we were already looking at,” Beshear said at his daily 5 p.m. briefing on the coronavirus.
Another guideline from the White House plan calls for robust testing of health care workers, which Dr. Steven Stack, Kentucky’s public health commissioner, said was “still a problem” in the state. Stack said Kentucky, like many states, lacks the swabs to increase testing to meet this guideline.
“The proposal actually requires us to be able to test at a scale that no state is testing right now,” Stack said. But “we agree with this, we need to get the testing capacity rapidly up so that doctors and offices and hospitals can test a much larger number of people.”
Beshear released his own set of seven guidelines for Kentucky on Friday, some aligning with the president’s proposals. Beshear is calling for increased testing, availability of protective equipment and plans to protect vulnerable populations as thresholds to begin lifting restrictions.
Trump’s proposals may give some political cover to Beshear, a Democratic governor who was elected by a narrow margin in a state where the president enjoys high popularity. Beshear faced a loud demonstration earlier this week as a few dozen protesters interrupted his daily briefing with chants to put them back to work.
On Friday, protesters returned, but circled the capitol building in cars after state police put yellow tape around the grounds to keep crowds from gathering and spreading the virus.
Beshear announced there were eight new deaths from the virus on Friday, including an inmate at the Green River Correctional Complex, bringing the state’s death toll to at least 137. In all there were 134 new cases reported in Kentucky, for a total of more than 2,500 since early March.
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This story has corrected the name of the prison to the Green River Correctional Complex, not the Green River Correctional Facility.
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