FRANKFORT, Ky. — Wednesday during his daily briefing, Governor Andy Beshear announced the phased restart of Kentucky’s economy will begin on Monday, April 27. Beshear said it will start with a segment of the health care services industry.
Easing of restrictions will allow for diagnostic and radiology testing, as well as non-urgent, emergent, in-person office and ambulatory visits, Beshear said.
“We are very close to coming to a consensus and an agreement in being able to put out guidelines for the gradual reopening of many of our hospital and health care services,” Gov. Beshear said. “We will be moving from this phase to others. Health care is a good and important place to start some of our reopening.”
Kentucky will go through three phases in dealing with coronavirus:
- Sacrifice
- Planning and Patience
- Perseverance
Beshear says the state is now in the planning and patience phase.
“Whether it is shuttering a business temporarily, or if it’s that you’re not going to work right now because of what has happened with this virus,” he said. “Whether it is changes to your life, your children not going to school, we have shown that we can pass the test of sacrifice.”
The Governor said the phased health care services reopening is the first under the Healthy at Work initiative he introduced Tuesday to help businesses reopen safely when the time is right.
The initiative set out public health benchmarks for reopening Kentucky’s economy. These benchmarks closely follow the White House’s Guidelines for Reopening America. Beshear said a foundational basis for safely reopening the economy requires a massive scaling up of testing capacity in the commonwealth.
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