Kentucky gained 277 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 Monday and four additional deaths.
Eleven of the new cases were children under the age of 11, including a four-month old in Fayette County. Governor Andy Beshear said during his afternoon update that Tuesday’s number of new cases is likely to be higher with more labs reporting data.
Kentucky’s rolling seven-day average positivity rate on all tests performed is 4.35 percent and while that’s much higher than it had been a few weeks ago, it’s still among the lowest numbers seen across the country.
Kentucky is up to 19,653 total cases and 629 deaths since the pandemic began.
Governor Beshear says the key to avoiding additional shutdowns of aspects of the economy is maintaining hospital and ICU capacity—which Kentucky is doing well at this point.
The governor hopes to have challenges to his executive orders on masks and crowd limitations to the Kentucky Supreme Court and says he looks forward to a day when having to issue restrictive orders to prevent spread of the virus won’t be part of his duties.
He echoed sentiments from national leaders who believe widespread mask-wearing is the quickest path to returning to as close to the old normal as we can find until there is a vaccine.
Tennessee reported another record number of new cases at 3,314. Montgomery County added 46 cases, Robertson 24 and Stewart County gained one new case.