The new restrictions issued Wednesday by Gov. Andy Beshear are necessary, according to Green River District Health Department Director Clay Horton. He said the surge in cases is a trend in the wrong direction, so new steps needed to be taken.
“I think they have to be done,” Horton said. “We’ve tried giving advice and telling folks the right things to do. We’re not doing well in terms of our numbers.”
Daviess County moved back into the Red Zone of Kentucky’s COVID-19 incidence rate on Nov. 5, and it has remained there due to a sharp increase in the number of daily cases. Red Zone counties are those with a rolling seven-day average of 25 or more daily cases of COVID-19 per 100,000 residents.
The county’s rate as of Wednesday night was 44.8 — and it’s been above 40 since Nov. 11.
All but 13 of Kentucky’s 120 counties are in the Red Zone.
So, Beshear unveiled a handful of new temporary restrictions Wednesday. Those include further limitations on private gatherings, venue spaces, and gyms/recreation facilities; closing bars and restaurants to indoor service; and requiring public and private schools to cease in-person learning.
Full details of those restrictions can be found here.
“It’s trying to save people’s lives — no ifs, ands or buts about it,” Horton said. “The science is clear on this. These are steps that need to be taken, or we’re going to see people die. … I think that if anything short of an order like this would have gained folks’ cooperation, we would have already done it. In fact, we’ve already tried everything. People ought to comply not because it’s being ordered, but because they care about those others that are around them.”
Horton has repeatedly said community spread has been the biggest factor in the rise in cases locally, so he fully supports the new limitations.
“The trend is private get-togethers,” Horton previously told Owensboro Times. “We see everything from weddings to funerals to shopping trips to golf outings, people getting together for dinner or riding in the car together to visit other friends.”
While he acknowledged transmissions within schools walls have been minimal, Horton also agrees with the decision to cease in-person learning for now.
“We don’t have strong evidence that there’s student-to-student transmission in the school setting. But we have seen our social dynamics shifted when schools are in session,” he said. “We see that we have families interacting with each other more. There are more opportunities for people to interact. We had a high number of quarantines in the in-school settings because of the number of infections that we have in the community. When you get an incidence rate as high as it is right now, it just becomes very hard to manage organizations that large because so much of your workforce and your clients is going to be impacted.”
He continued, “If the community was really concerned about students learning in person, then they will buckle down and do the right thing now. They’ll make smart decisions about how they’re interacting at the gatherings they’re going to. If they do these things, the incidence rate will come down and we’ll be able to have in-person school again.”
Horton said the Health Department will continue their role of enforcing the new guidelines by fielding complaints and addressing issues as they arise.
While he knows the new limitations won’t be popular with a big percentage of the population, he hopes they look at the bigger picture.
“Think about what the true experts are saying and where we want to be next year — or six weeks from now for that matter,” he said. “We’re at a point where people need to sit up and take notice.”
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