State’s testing rate sufficient to inform, Hutchinson asserts
College updates projections, sees fewer active infections, later peak
Despite a recent slowdown in coronavirus testing, Gov. Asa Hutchinson said Tuesday that the amount is sufficient “to give us a good idea as to the level of the spread of the virus” in the state.
He spoke as the state’s count of cases rose by 410, the lowest daily increase in the past week.
“It’s clear that we’re either flat or going down, and that could depend upon the level of testing that you’re doing,” Hutchinson said of the virus’s rate of growth in the state. “But when you’re doing over 4,000 tests a day, that is more than we ever imagined three months ago, and so this is a significant amount of testing that we’re doing.”
The College of Public Health projections, dated Friday, show the number of active infections in the state peaking at 90,522 on Dec. 19 under a moderate scenario or 130,747 on Dec. 9 under a worst-case scenario.
Also on Tuesday, projections by the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences’ Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health predicted a later peak for the virus, with fewer active infections and hospitalizations, compared with what the college had projected a month earlier.
The college also estimated that holding all school classes online, instead of in person, would reduce the number of new infections each day by more than half, from 8,000 to 3,000, by Oct. 6. That includes cases discovered through testing and many more that are not.
With a mix of in-person and online classes, the virus would infect an average of 5,500 a day by that date, the college estimated.
Hutchinson will speak about the college’s projections today at his near-daily news conference on the pandemic, spokeswoman Katie Beck said.
The state’s death toll from the virus, as tracked by the Arkansas Department of Health, rose Tuesday by 16, to 619.
The number of people hospitalized with the virus in the state rose by six, to 492. That number had been increasing since Saturday but remained below the state’s peak of 526 patients who were hospitalized with covid-19 on Aug. 4.
The hospitalized patients on Tuesday included 122 who were on ventilators, up from 120 a day earlier.
The number of cases in the state that were considered active fell for the second-straight day, to 5,898, as 837 Arkansans were newly classified as having recovered.
That number remained well below the state’s peak of 7,387 active cases as of Aug. 9.
The state’s cumulative count of cases, including people who have recovered or died, rose to 53,487.
Addressing reporters from Arkansas Northeastern College in Blytheville on Tuesday, Hutchinson said 4,675 tests of Arkansans had been conducted Monday.
So far this month, the state has averaged just under 6,000 tests a day, down from an average of 6,285 last month.
Hutchinson has set a goal of testing 190,000 Arkansans this month, or an average of 6,129 tests a day.
“Obviously I would like to get it a little bit higher than that, and we hope that we can get there, but I’m comfortable that we’re getting a sense as to where we are with the virus and the extent of its spread,” Hutchinson said Tuesday of the number of tests conducted Monday.
The slowdown is because of fewer results coming in from commercial laboratories, which have struggled with shortages of supplies.
But state epidemiologist Jennifer Dillaha said Tuesday that the labs’ turnaround times have been improving.
Burlington, N.C.-based Lab Corp. said last week that it is delivering results in an average of one to three days, down from four to six days a month ago.
UPDATED PROJECTIONS
The College of Public Health projections, dated Friday, show the number of active infections in the state peaking at 90,522 on Dec. 19 under a moderate scenario or 130,747 on Dec. 9 under a worst-case scenario.
Those numbers include infections predicted to be confirmed through tests as well as undetected infections of people who don’t show symptoms and others who are infected but don’t get tested.
A month earlier, the researchers had predicted a peak of 103,651 infections on Nov. 26 under a moderate scenario or 168,570 on Nov. 14 under a worst-case scenario.
The latest projections also show hospitalizations peaking, under a moderate-case scenario, at 2,263, down from 2,591 in the earlier forecast.
The predicted peak of patients in intensive care units in that scenario rose from 777 to 905, but the number projected to be on ventilators fell from 543 to 362.
The latest forecast takes into account the statewide requirement for people to wear masks that went into effect July 20, researchers wrote.
The virus also is not spreading as quickly as researchers had initially expected.
“Earlier versions of the model, working with less available Arkansas data, relied more heavily on the assumptions derived from Chinese studies,” the researchers wrote. “Consequently, in the beginning the model predicted a more aggressive epidemic than we have observed in Arkansas.”
The revisions to the predicted numbers for intensive care units and ventilators also reflect the state’s experience so far.
About 40% of hospitalized patients have required intensive care, instead of the 30% the researchers initially expected.
Meanwhile, only about 40% of those patients have required ventilators, instead of the 70% estimate used in earlier forecasts.
The college’s model estimating the effect of school reopenings includes both confirmed and undetected infections.
The researchers assumed that students returning to class would be screened for symptoms and that students, teachers and staff members would be required to wear masks and “properly socially distance.”
“These scenarios also assume increasing social interactions over holiday weekends during the summer before school starts,” the researchers wrote.
The current number of new infections each day was estimated to be between 3,000 and 4,000, a chart in the forecast report indicates. That includes those discovered through testing and the majority who are not.
Examining the possible effect of Hutchinson’s mask order, the researchers found that it would reduce the number of new infections each day from 8,000 to 4,400 by Oct. 6 if almost everyone wears a mask outside the home, including in schools.
A moderate increase in mask-wearing would reduce the number of infections to 6,200, the researchers wrote.
Another, shorter-term model predicts the state’s confirmed cases will rise to 58,000 by Monday, with the death toll rising to 713.
In a video accompanying the forecast report, college Dean Mark Williams emphasized the projections are “not set in stone.”
He referred to the percentage of tests in the state that are positive. In the seven days through Monday, that rate averaged 8.7%, according to the Health Department.
“The future is what we make it,” Williams said. “The infectivity rate in Arkansas is too high, and for things to return to a more normal state, the infectivity rate must be decreased to less than 5%.
“The time is now for all of us to do our part.”
SPORTS DEBATE
The state’s count of coronavirus cases rose Tuesday by 44 in Sebastian County, 40 in Pulaski County, 29 in Washington County, 16 in Benton County and 14 in Union County.
Among prison and jail inmates, the number of cases rose by 85. Such increases can reflect new cases as well as ones that were added earlier but not immediately classified as coming from a jail or prison.
Meanwhile, records obtained by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette under the state
Freedom of Information Act also provide details of the debate preceding Hutchinson’s decisions to allow school and community contact sports, such as football and basketball, to resume team practices with contact earlier this month.
“The governor is putting together a group of physicians, school superintendents, psychologists, and representatives of the [Arkansas Activities Association] to provide him recommendations regarding school sports,” Health Secretary Jose Romero said in a July 30 email to Dillaha and Joel Tumlison, a physician specialist at the Health Department.
“He has openly acknowledged that the [Physicians Pandemic Group] is not in favor of going forward with school sports.”
Romero said in the email that Hutchinson wanted several people from the Physicians Pandemic Group to join the sports advisory group.
“He expects you to freely express your opinions,” Romero wrote.
Health Department spokesman Gavin Lesnick said Tuesday that the Physicians Pandemic Group “includes physicians, nurses and a variety of medical professionals.”
“The PPG considers all aspects of the pandemic and the various directives, guidelines and policies that should be implemented to best control the spread of COVID-19 in Arkansas,” Lesnick said in an email.
“This is an evolving situation and strategies can change as new information and ideas are considered, as well as improvements in contact tracing, case investigation and testing in the state.”
Hutchinson on July 31 announced the creation of the advisory group on high school sports, which now has 14 members, including Tumlison, Dillaha and four other physicians, including its chairman, Arkansas Surgeon General Greg Bledsoe.
In an Aug. 5 memo to Hutchinson, Bledsoe said Tumlison “is not in favor of beginning contact [sports] because he believes it is too much risk.”
“He would prefer to delay the timeline and push the season back and then reevaluate,” Bledsoe said in the memo.
Michael Israel, associate professor of adolescent medicine and director of sports medicine at Arkansas Children’s Hospital, “prefers that the timeline be pushed back, but said that if the timeline cannot be delayed he is in favor of starting contact now,” Bledsoe said in the memo.
Arkansas Activities Association Director Lance Taylor “explained why pushing the timeline back would be very difficult,” the memo says.
“Dr. Israel then said he was in favor of going forward with the contact provision since he is concerned that if the athletes do not begin contact now they will see an increased number of injuries during the season due to poor conditioning.”
Lowry Barnes, orthopedic surgeon and chairman of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences department of orthopedics, “expressed a concern about moving forward too quickly” at the group’s Aug. 3 meeting but wasn’t at the meeting on Aug. 5, according to the memo.
Dillaha, meanwhile, “asked questions regarding what ‘contact’ means in football.”
“Once explained, she noted that ‘contact’ as used during the COVID-19 pandemic for public health officials was defined as ‘within six feet for 15 minutes,’” Bledsoe said in the memo.
“She said that this seems to have been already occurring on the football teams and she was okay with allowing tackling as long as the coaches and other staff continued to abide by the other parameters set forth by the Health Department (social distancing and masks).”
The group’s other physician member, state Rep. Lee Johnson, R-Greenwood, also supported allowing contact.
He “noted that each team was already serving as a cohort unto itself and so the addition of tackling should not significantly increase the risk of spread,” Bledsoe said in the memo.