Covid-19 update: UK to put field hospital in football practice facility; tests show best materials for making homemade masks

As news develops in Kentucky about the coronavirus and its covid-19 disease, this item will be updated. Official state guidance is at https://kycovid19.ky.gov.

• The University of Kentucky said it would convert its football practice facility, Nutter Fieldhouse, into a 400-bed field hospital.
• UK researchers and faculty have formed a workgroup "to focus on advising covid-19 patient care and clinical trials based on emerging research and potential treatment options," UK says.
• "Four in 10 Americans are not properly allowing disinfectant sprays and wipes to kill the viruses and germs that can make us sick," says the American Cleaning Institute, citing a poll it commissioned.
• Music can help people deal with the stress caused by isolation and other ramifications of the coronavirus, an Ohio State professor says.
• With the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expected to recommend that Americans wear masks in public, the town of Midway, population 1,700, is rounding up volunteers to make them.
• The type of fabric used in homemade masks "is key to their effectiveness, according to tests performed at Wake Forest Baptist Health," it says in a news release. "The best-performing design was constructed of two layers of high-quality, heavyweight “quilter’s cotton” with a thread count of 180 or more, and those with especially tight weave and thicker thread such as batiks. A double-layer mask with a simple cotton outer layer and an inner layer of flannel also performed well. . . . The inferior performers consisted of single-layer masks or double-layer designs of lower quality, lightweight cotton."
• The Lexington Herald-Leader and the Louisville Courier Journal did front-page stories on the Dawson Springs church whose revival sparked an outbreak of covid-19 cases in Hopkins and other counties.
• "A Lexington-based uniform company that provides N95 masks to police has been accused of price gouging by two Arizona lawmakers," the Herald-Leader reports. Galls, a uniform, equipment and gear store, was targeted in a letter to U.S. Attorney General William Barr Wednesday. "Galls provides masks to Phoenix’s police and fire departments, according to a letter posted online by Scripps."