That’s Public Health Commissioner Dr. Steven Stack during tonight’s Coronavirus briefing from the State Capitol. “This is not a drill. This is serious.”
There are now 87 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Kentucky and another patient has died, bringing the total number of fatalities to three. Dr. Stack confirmed that all had underlying health conditions. Two children, an 8 month old and six year old continue to recover and are doing well.
Governor Andy Beshear continued to push social distancing and called out businesses and organizations that refused to follow orders to close. Dr. Stack explained again how easily this virus is spread. “You put a whole bunch of people together and you have one infected person and a whole lot of them get infected then it’s like buckshot. They all scatter and they spread it everywhere they go. So we’ve got to stay apart from each other. That’s why that’s so important. The other thing is you get one person going house to house, so think about this, think about a honey bee. A honey bee goes flower to flower and what do they do? They pollinate. They spread the pollen. So here the pollen is COVID-19. So if you have one honey bee going house to house to provide services you have just pollinated this disease throughout a community.”
Some good news for business owners. Governor Beshear announced the SBA has approved small business relief loans. The number to apply for a disaster loan is 800-659-2995. Starting tomorrow you will be filing for unemployment on certain days based on the first letter of your last name. For information on these programs or anything else related to the Novel Coronavirus and its impact the state’s resource site is kycovid19.ky.gov.