Gov. Andy Beshear on Thursday reported 4,324 new coronavirus cases, including 28 new deaths, but Beshear also pointed to a lower positivity rate – 9.13% – as a potential sign that the growth in new cases may be slowing.

“Now, we do have the highest number of new cases that we’ve ever had today,” Beshear said in Frankfort. “Even with that, we’re tracking about 800 fewer cases than last week. Remember, we’ve got to plateau before we can decrease.”

The governor said the state may be seeing the impact of Thanksgiving gatherings on its coronavirus numbers.

“I can tell you that if we’re seeing Thanksgiving’s impact, it’s a lot less than what we are seeing in some other states,” Beshear said.

Every Kentucky county – barring Menifee County – was in the red with its local coronavirus incidence rate Thursday. Elementary schools were permitted to reopen starting Dec. 7 under Beshear’s mandates if their county was not in the red zone and schools followed all the Healthy at Schools guidance.

Middle and high school students will not return to in-person instruction until Jan. 4 at the earliest.

On Thursday, Beshear said he hoped to announce next week new guidance for schools to reopen in red counties starting Jan. 4. That update could come as early as Monday or possibly Tuesday, he said.

Responding to a reporter’s question about school closures, Beshear said local school district superintendents publicly tell the media they want local control of those decisions, “and then they call us saying ‘Don’t put this pressure on us.’ ”

“You can’t have it both ways,” Beshear said. “We reached a point where it was no longer safe. We were going to have a surge after Thanksgiving. …

“We’re working on a way that we believe that we can operate schools safely, even in red zones,” Beshear said. “Tough decisions aren’t easy. … We’re going to make sure that there are protections for employees in the school.”

At least one school district leader – Fleming County Schools Superintendent Brian Creasman, named 2020 Kentucky Superintendent of the Year – pushed back on Beshear’s claim.

“I will publicly say I have never asked him to make the decision to close schools – that is a local decision based on local data,” Creasman told the Daily News.

In an interview, Creasman said several school districts across the state, including his own, have negotiated the hurdles of holding in-person classes safely for those students who want to attend. Fleming County Schools started offering a mix of in-person and virtual classes Sept. 8 after meeting with state Department of Education officials to get their blessing, Creasman said, adding “they didn’t raise any issue.”

The district was open for about seven weeks before Beshear’s order to close.

“We had one positive case in seven-and-a-half weeks,” Creasman said. “From that one positive case, we had no cases stemming from that.”

Creasman said his school district has managed to offer in-person classes while also extending the maximum amount of grace to staff.

“We didn’t want them to use sick leave. We provided those emergency leave days, and then we’re constantly meeting with staff who we think might have some health needs,” he said.

In the district’s schools, sanitation efforts have been elevated to a near-religious practice, with staff cleaning classrooms every two hours and HVAC units adjusted to modify indoor humidity and temperature levels to curb the spread of droplets and mouth aerosols that the virus hitches on to. Masks are worn throughout the school day, with the exception of a few breaks outside.

“We did it right – we did everything KDE suggested,” said Creasman, who worries local school district leaders are being excluded from the new guidance Beshear is crafting.

“I think there’s a lot of mixed messages coming out of Frankfort toward schools,” Creasman said. “COVID is real … and the data is bad. We have people hurting. We have people dying. But to say it’s bad in one breath and then turn around and in two weeks we can reopen restaurants … These are these mixed messages that we’re getting. If it’s so bad, then how are we doing that and not doing school?”

On that front, Beshear said Thursday that restaurants and bars, along with restrictions for other businesses, will lift starting Monday. Bars and eateries will able to return to 50% indoor capacity – provided they’re better at enforcing masks indoors, Beshear said.

“We need a renewed commitment to that,” Beshear said.

Locally, Beshear announced 106 new coronavirus cases in Warren County on Thursday, though his report did not include any new deaths here.

The Barren River District Health Department has confirmed a total of 15,696 cases since the pandemic started, 12,740 of which have recovered. There have been 188 deaths reported from COVID-19 in the department’s eight-county region.

The breakdown of recovered/deaths/total cases is Barren: 1,937, 29, 2,268; Butler: 548, 16, 678; Edmonson: 385, 13, 470; Hart: 806, 4, 1,087; Logan: 1,164, 36, 1,380; Metcalfe: 369, 4, 485; Simpson: 668, 9, 922 and Warren: 6,863, 77, 8,406.

The Allen County Health Department, which is not affiliated with Barren River, reported 15 new cases of COVID-19 on Thursday.

Allen County now has had a total of 866 cases reported since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak. Currently, 747 cases have fully recovered and are off quarantine with 103 active cases in quarantine at this time either at home or hospitalized, the department said. There have been 16 deaths in Allen County to date.

– Follow education reporter Aaron Mudd on Twitter @NewsByAaron or visit bgdailynews.com.