Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Covid-19 deaths rise to 43 in state
Official virus-case tally reaches 2,262; ‘working group’ to focus on testing
Arkansas’ death toll from the coronavirus rose one on Tuesday, to 43, while the state’s official tally of cases increased to 2,262.
Even that case total, an increase of more than 291 from the previous evening, appeared to still leave out more than 200 positive test results from the Cummins Unit in Lincoln County.
Nate Smith, secretary of the state Department of Health, said Tuesday 670 inmates and at least 10 staff members at the prison tested positive as of Monday evening.
Of the 304 new cases added to the state’s official tally of total cases since Monday afternoon, 262 were from Cummins, Smith said.
Health Department spokesman Meg Mirivel said many of the tests at Cummins have been done by the John L. McClellan Memorial Veterans Hospital in Little Rock and the American Esoteric Laboratories in Memphis.
Cases are added to Arkansas’ total as the results are received from labs and
entered into a state database, she said. She said she didn’t have information on Tuesday on how many results had yet to be entered.
Smith said the Health Department has finished testing inmates at the prison but is continuing to test staff members.
At his daily news conference Gov. Asa Hutchinson also announced he appointed a “working group” of public health officials and other medical professionals to make recommendations on expanding Arkansas’ capacity to test for covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
“This is something that I’ve acknowledged from Day One, that we have to do more testing,” Hutchinson said.
“We are challenged in terms of reagents and supply line, and it is getting better, but we need to continue to grow not just what we do in terms of contact tracing capability for testing but also in terms of surveillance, where we can see where we are more broadly in the population in Arkansas.”
LATEST DEATHS
Health Department data from a state website indicated that a Howard County resident was the 43rd Arkansan, and first one from that county, to be included in the state’s official death toll from the virus.
Miller County also issued a news release Tuesday evening saying that an 83-year-old Texarkana man had died of the virus.
The man was admitted to Christus St. Michael Hospital in Texarkana, Texas, on April 7 and died Tuesday, according to the release, which didn’t name him.
“The Miller County Judges Office, Miller County Office of Emergency Management and the City of Texarkana, Arkansas offers our condolences to the family during this tragic event,” county officials said in the release.
A state website didn’t list Miller County as having any residents who were included in the 43-death total as of Tuesday evening.
In addition to the Howard County resident, the website’s total included 12 people from Pulaski County, seven from Jefferson County, five from Crittenden County, four in Cleburne County, two each from Faulkner and Van Buren counties and one each from Bradley, Conway, Craighead, Drew, Hempstead, Lawrence, Lee, Phillips, Saline and White counties.
MAP MISREAD
The testing working group met for the first time on Tuesday afternoon, shortly after the press conference.
A day earlier, Hutchinson had touted a map appearing to show Arkansas had conducted more tests per 1,000 residents than surrounding states.
But the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported Tuesday the state lagged all of those states except Texas on that measure.
As of Tuesday afternoon, the 27,441 test results included in Arkansas’ official tally amounted to 9 tests per 1,000 residents.
Compared to other states and the District of Columbia, Arkansas’ ranked 36th in that measure, according to data from the Covid Tracking Project, which collects information from state health departments.
The state also had the 15th-lowest number of positive cases compared to its population and seventh-lowest number of covid-19 deaths per 1,000 residents.
Hutchinson said Tuesday he apparently misinterpreted the map, which he received from the White House. He said it could be referring to testing capacity rather than tests that had been performed.
“I take some responsibility for that,” Hutchinson said. “I probably should have called the White House and looked at that a little more closely.”
He said he would follow up with the White House to get more information.
A White House official said later Tuesday the map showed the testing capacity in each state of “high throughput machines” operated by commercial laboratories compared to the tests that had been conducted in each state.
NON-PRISON CASES DOWN
Those who had tested positive since a day earlier included seven nursing home residents, bringing the total number of such residents to 135, Smith said.
Meanwhile, five more health care workers tested positive, bringing the number of such workers with identified infections to 249.
The number of patients who were hospitalized fell by seven to 86 as 14 patients were discharged and seven were admitted.
Excluding prison inmates, Smith said the average number of new cases identified each day had fallen from about 70 a day last week to about half that amount.
“So that’s a good sign that we’re hopefully on the downswing in terms of community transmission of covid-19,” Smith said. “That’s very, very encouraging for me.”
Among counties with more than 100 cases, none seemed to be on the “upward trend,” he said.
And while the outbreak at Cummins is “alarming,” he said the department was working to contain it by separating inmates who have tested positive from those who tested negative.
“A prison setting is probably the ideal setting to control an outbreak because you can segregate people, and you can restrict their movements,” Smith said. “Their movements are restricted just by the nature of that setting.”
Lincoln County was listed as having 443 cases Tuesday evening, up from 228 the previous morning.
In Pulaski County, the cases increased by 15 over the same period to hit 400 as of Tuesday evening.
TASK FORCE MEETS
Tuesday also marked the first meeting of the Governor’s Economic Recovery Task Force, appointed by Hutchinson on Saturday to make recommendations on easing restrictions put in place to slow the virus’ spread.
Hutchinson has set May 4 as a target to begin lifting some restrictions as long as certain conditions are met.
Task force Chairman Steuart Walton, grandson of Walmart founder Sam Walton, said the group formed three committees, each chaired by a state cabinet secretary, to focus on different areas.
Stacy Hurst, secretary of the Department of Park, Heritage and Tourism, will lead a committee focusing on tourism, community and health care; Department of Commerce Secretary Mike Preston will chair a committee focused on commerce; and Department of Agriculture Secretary Wes Ward’s committee will study agriculture, grocery stores and education.
Walton said the task force hopes to issue an initial set of recommendations on May 4, and interim report by the end of May and a final report by the end of June.
“In addition to the tactical recommendations that we plan to report and present to the governor from time to time, the committee is really going to be also focused on a strategic set of recommendations for businesses and industry across Arkansas that will really help us thrive in the recovery and far into the future,” Walton said.
Hutchinson said owners of restaurants and other businesses are trying to plan for the future.
“They’re actually very responsible and understand the need for what we’ve done, but they do want to have a path forward,” he said.
Hair salon owners, in particular, are struggling financially because the state has not yet finished work on a system allowing them for them to file for unemployment benefits for self-employed workers and independent contractors under the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act. And their customers are wondering, “When can get my hair done again?” Hutchinson said.
“There’s pressure there, but there’s also great risk,” Hutchinson said. “That’s what we’re trying to balance.”
Because of the close proximity between workers and customers in hair salons and barber shops, they are not among those that would be allowed to open under the first phase of the White House guidelines on relaxing social distancing restrictions, Smith said. But he said the department will explore the precautions that could be taken that would allow such businesses to open during that phase. He said he also hopes the state’s growth in new cases will continue falling, allowing it to quickly progress through the three phases of the White House plan.
The guidelines recommend that states have a “downward trajectory” of new cases or the percentage of tests that are positive for two weeks before proceeding from one phase to another.
Hutchinson and Smith said they disagreed with projections last week from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation that set June 22 as the earliest date Arkansas could begin lifting restrictions.
The date is based on when infections in the state are predicted to drop below 1 per 1 million residents, which in Arkansas, with a population of 3 million residents, would mean three active cases.
“We certainly have the case follow-up and contact tracing capability to manage a lot more than three cases in the entire state,” Smith said.