 With coronavirus cases soaring across the state, Governor Andy Beshear and Public Health Commissioner Dr. Steven Stack are continuing to urge Kentuckians to take steps to combat the spread of the virus. And, as has been the case for months, those steps essentially boil down to two. Get a vaccine and wear a mask. During a COVID-19 press briefing this morning, both men warned that Kentucky's hospitals are quickly approaching capacity. Hospitalizations have been doubling every two weeks, something we've never seen before. Again, Dr. Stack will talk about it more, but by the end of the week, we expect to have, by the end of this week, expect to have more Kentuckians in the hospital battling COVID at any point in this pandemic. Those are your friends, your neighbors, your loved ones, people you fought for all the way up to now. We need everybody to continue to do the right thing and to realize what this also means is we are very close to all of our hospitals being full. We have tried all along, I think, to be calm, be reassuring, to give people actionable information so that we can all get through this to better. And I think we both continue to want to do that. We've tried to be very candid and honest, though, too, so that you've had the information to make an informed decision. So I'm going to tell you right now the health care capacity is is going to get really difficult here in the weeks ahead. And Bashir says that while death is obviously the worst outcome of the disease, those who survive could still face other difficulties that science is still trying to understand. We talk about death due to COVID and rightfully so. I mean, that is the worst outcome. But what I don't think we as a population have enough appreciation for is COVID can not only get you really sick in the short term, but a whole lot of people have stayed sick in different ways for months or even longer. We've seen some people even take their lives based on the complications, impacts on them. There is still so much we don't know about the long term effects of the virus. Some people are worried about the vaccine. We still don't know so much about the long term impacts of the virus, but we know that they've been really significant and really difficult. And right now we can't say for sure why someone has long hauler symptoms and conditions and another one doesn't. And that ought to raise even more concerns with what we want to do to make sure that we prevent getting the virus in the first place. Kentuckians wishing to be vaccinated or tested can find out where to go on the state's COVID-19 web portal at kycovid19.ky.gov.