State’s new cases rise to 480; lack of testing demand noted
After declining for three days, the growth in Arkansas’ count of coronavirus cases ticked back up Tuesday, with 480 cases added despite a slowdown in testing that state officials blamed in part on a lack of demand.
The state’s death toll from the virus, as tracked by the state Department of Health, rose by 15, to 711.
The number of people hospitalized in the state with covid-19 dropped by 24, to 442.
The rise in the state’s cumulative case tally came after 3,300 tests were conducted Monday.
According to information presented at Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s near-daily news conference on the pandemic, that was the first time the daily testing total had dropped below 4,000 since late May.
Hutchinson, who gave Tuesday’s briefing at Arkansas State University Three Rivers in Malvern, said some people may have been discouraged by long waits to get results from commercial laboratories.
Those turnaround times have improved, he said.
“It takes an individual citizen saying, ‘I’ve traveled; maybe I should get a test,’”
Hutchinson said. “It takes an individual citizen making the decision that ‘I’m not feeling well today; I need to get a test.’”
The Health Department’s laboratory in Little Rock conducted 551 of the tests on Monday, its lowest total since early July.
Health Secretary Jose Romero said the dip was “in part a reflection of the lack of demand.”
“It’s not because our staff is not present there or our machines are incapacitated,” Romero said. “We are not getting those specimens to us.”
He said the department is working on a plan to increase testing, and he encouraged Arkansans to get tested if they think they may have been exposed to the virus.
“I really want to make sure that we all don’t fall into this trap of testing fatigue,” Romero said.
“It is tiresome to hear me, over and over again, to say we need testing, but without those numbers, we cannot give an adequate forecast, an adequate idea of what the numbers of cases and the prevalence is in your county, and especially for the schools, now that we’re working with [the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement] in getting school-based numbers.”
The Health Department offers the test at its local health units around the state at no cost to the patient, although the patient’s health insurance plan may be billed.
As of Monday, laboratories had conducted 143,752 polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, tests of Arkansans this month, or an average of 5,989 tests per day.
Hutchinson has set a goal of having 190,000 Arkansans receive PCR tests this month, or an average of 6,129 tests a day.
“We’re going to have to kick it in gear to meet our goal,” Hutchinson said Tuesday.
Hutchinson also set a goal for the month of conducting 10,000 antigen tests, which are generally quicker but less accurate than PCR tests.
Although Hutchinson said Thursday that 10,358 antigen tests have been conducted this month, Health Department spokeswoman Danyelle McNeill said Tuesday that the number includes tests performed during and before August.
A chart Hutchinson displayed Tuesday put the number of antigen tests performed this month at 3,610.
Hutchinson on Tuesday also presented a chart showing that, compared to nine other states, Arkansas had conducted more tests per 100,000 residents than Oklahoma, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri and Kansas but fewer than Louisiana or Tennessee.
WHITE HOUSE REPORT
Hutchinson also noted that the latest version of a report from the White House coronavirus task force listed Arkansas as being in the “red zone” for its growth in cases last week, but in the “yellow zone” for the percentage of its tests that were positive.
States were listed as being in the red zone for new cases if they had more than 100 new cases per 100,000 residents in the seven-day period ending Friday.
Arkansas had 3,660 cases during that period, or 121 cases per 100,000 residents, which the report, dated Sunday, said was the 13th-highest growth rate in the country.
But the number was down 7.7% compared with the number of cases Arkansas added the previous week.
The country as a whole added 306,444 cases last week, or 93 per 100,000 residents, according to the report.
The report also classifies states as being in the red zone for “positivity” if more than 10% of its tests during the week were positive.
Arkansas’ rate was 9.6%, down from 10.5% the previous week, the report indicated. It said Arkansas’ rate last week was the ninth-highest in the country.
Of the tests conducted nationwide last week, 5.8% were positive, according to the report.
The report also listed 33 of the state’s counties as being in the red zone, meaning they had more than 100 new cases per 100,000 residents last week and a positivity rate of more than 10%.
That was down from the 37 counties in the state that were listed as being in the red zone in the Aug. 2 version of the report.
Sebastian, Mississippi, Craighead, Saline and Garland counties topped the list in the most recent report based on their growth in cases last week.
Twenty-eight counties, including Pulaski, Washington and Benton counties, were listed as being in the yellow zone, meaning they didn’t meet the red zone criteria but had at least 10 new cases per 100,000 residents and that at least 5% of the tests were positive.
Among other measures, the report recommends closing bars statewide and restricting indoor dining to 25% of restaurant capacity in red-zone counties and to 50% in yellow-zone counties.
Under Phase 2 of Arkansas’ reopening plan, it has limited restaurant seating to 66% of capacity.
The report also recommends limiting gatherings to 10 or fewer people in redzone counties and 25 or fewer people in yellow-zone counties.
It also refers to guidelines published by West Virginia’s education agency in preparation for the start of that state’s school year on Sept. 8.
According to those guidelines, in-person instruction will be suspended in counties with 25 or more cases per 100,000 people over a rolling seven-day period.
Hutchinson and Arkansas education officials have said they expect Arkansas schools to be open for in-person instruction every day when classes are normally held, although schools can also offer online options and switch to remote learning in response to outbreaks among teachers or students.
Hutchinson said Tuesday that he believes many of the White House task force report’s recommendations are not “appropriate under our current circumstances, and so we’re setting our path based upon the information that we have in front of us.”
“We’re trying to follow the data as to what our new cases are connected to, and we haven’t seen a connection to economic activity, and so we’re not going to be shutting down economic activity because we don’t see that correlation, and we want our businesses to be able to continue to stay open,” he said.
He noted he has adopted one of the report’s recommendations — implementing a statewide mask mandate.
He said he’s hopeful the state’s growth in cases will drop below 3,000 this week, allowing it to move to the yellow zone for its growth in cases.
“As you can see, we’re close to getting there, but we’ve got a little bit more work to do,” he said.
SCHOOL CASES
During the first two days of the school year that started Monday, the 21,000-student Little Rock School District reported that one student and one staff member had tested positive for the virus.
The district said it was notified Monday that the student at Mann Middle School had tested positive “within the community” and that it learned Tuesday that the staff member at Bale Elementary School had tested positive.
Neither case required the quarantine of other staff members or students, the district said in a statement.
The district also said it was notified of two students at Southwest High School and one each at Roberts Elementary School, Booker Elementary School and Hall High School who were in quarantine due to potential exposure to the virus.
It said it was also notified of two staff members at Western Hills Elementary School and one staff member each at Forest Heights STEM Academy, Mabelvale Middle School, Chicot Elementary School, Southwest High School and a finance department staff member who were in quarantine.
ACTIVE CASES DROP
The drop in the number of patients who were hospitalized Tuesday followed a decrease of 34 hospitalized patients on Monday.
The patients on Tuesday included 108 who were on ventilators, a number that hadn’t changed from a day earlier.
Romero said two of the 15 deaths that were added to the state’s count happened “in the months prior to August” but weren’t immediately reported, and seven were among nursing home residents.
The state’s cumulative case count rose Tuesday to 57,374, dating back to March 11.
The number of cases that were considered active fell by 197, to 5,312, as 662 Arkansans were newly classified as having recovered.
The cases that were added to the state’s total included 80 in Pulaski County, 41 in Faulkner County, 34 in Sebastian County and 22 in Saline County.
Among prison and jail inmates, the count of cases rose by two. Such increases can reflect new cases as well as ones that were added earlier but not immediately classified as coming from jails or prisons.
A Health Department report indicated that the first outbreak has occurred among inmates at the McPherson Unit in Newport, with 11 inmates at the prison for women testing positive.
The department’s count of cases rose by 20, to 640, at the Department of Corrections’ Wrightsville complex; by 14, to 17, at the Craighead County jail in Jonesboro; by five, to 88, at the Mississippi County Work Release Center; by four, to 33, at the Greene County jail in Paragould; by one, to 34, at the Crawford County jail in Van Buren; and by one, to 462, at the Delta Regional Unit in Dermott.
The prison system reports to the Health Department about its cases, but those may not be immediately entered into the official case count.
Among nursing home and assisted living facility residents, the Health Department’s count of cases rose by seven, to 1,932.
Among staff members at those homes and facilities, the department’s count of cases rose by four, to 1,291.
Hutchinson said Tuesday that he believes many of the White House task force report’s recommendations are not “appropriate under our current circumstances, and so we’re setting our path based upon the information that we have in front of us.”