KENTUCKY — At his Thursday briefing in Frankfort, Gov. Andy Beshear said indoor dining may resume again in Kentucky, beginning Monday.

This is not a new order — rather, he is allowing his Nov. 18 restrictions to expire on their predetermined end date, rolling back to 50% capacity in restaurants.

"We always expected this to be a time-limited shock to the system," Beshear said. 

This came as welcome news to Stacy Roof, CEO of the Kentucky Restaurant Association.

"[Restaurants] were gaining a little bit of ground back that they had lost over the past eight months, nine months," she said during a Friday video interview. "Within the last few weeks, being closed during the holiday season, that’s really a big blow because that’s when they make quite a bit of money to carry them through to spring time."

Beshear said we do not yet know what negative health impacts will come from people gathering this Thanksgiving.

Then why ease restrictions now, as daily positive cases across the state remain at what the health cabinet calls “critical” levels? Beshear pointed to saving small businesses and the positivity rate trending in a better direction.

"[The shutdown] was a week longer than what we did in July, which worked," he said. "We plateaued exponential growth there, and we at least see indicators that that’s what we see now."

I posed to Roof the question that if positive cases and/or hospitalizations are traced back to restaurants allowing indoor dining, would that be an acceptable trade off to save struggling businesses?

"You know, we’ve never seen that happen and we are nine months in," she answered. "So, I can’t imagine that that’s the case."

Roof said there is no data that shows restaurants should be singled out. In November, state Republican lawmakers said Beshear had not provided contact tracing data showing where spread has occurred.

Beshear has cited multiple studies conducted by top universities and the CDC that claim restaurants are among the most dangerous places for COVID-19 spread. Another CDC study published in September reported those who tested positive in the study were twice as likely to have dined out than their non-positive peers.

Dr. Steven Stack, head of the commonwealth's health cabinet, said in the Thursday briefing masking up is crucial.

"We want to keep the economy going, we want to keep people working," he said from his office. "We need all of that. There’s a lot of other benefits associated with that. But how we do that is determined by all of our behavior, and how much dysfunction this disease causes in other ways."

With lives at stake, restaurant workers again face a juggling act. They’re the ones left to enforce mask mandates, while trying to keep the hospitality business hospitable.