Arkansas: Test surge before reopening
Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson on Thursday unveiled a strategy for increasing the amount of coronavirus testing in the state, including a campaign aimed at creating a “surge” of tests today and Saturday.
He said he wants to increase the rate of testing from an average of about 1,000 tests a day to 1,500 a day on those days.
“There’s an inventory available out there for testing right now all across the state of Arkansas,” the Republican governor said. “And so Arkansans, we’re asking you for the next two days, if you’ve thought about it before, if you think you’ve got symptoms or you’ve got flu-like symptoms, or you’re in an at-risk category and you’ve been traveling, go in there. Let’s get tested.”
Following the recommendations of an advisory group of medical professionals formed this week, the testing strategy also includes guidance to health care providers that they should test anyone with possible exposure to the virus — whether or not the patient has symptoms.
Those with possible exposure include patients who have had contact with someone known to have the virus or who were recently in an area with a large outbreak.
Previously, the state Department of Health had recommended that such patients be quarantined at home for 14 days and tested only if they develop symptoms.
On Thursday, the state’s official count of cases increased by 207, to 2,599, while its death toll from the virus increased by one, to 45.
The statewide case total still did not include all of the infections associated with an outbreak at the Cummins Unit in Lincoln County, where the number of infections among inmates increased on Thursday by, six to 687, and among staff by 21, to 35.
According to the Health Department, cases from the prison outbreak are being added to the state’s total as information from laboratory reports are entered into a state database.
Inmates accounted for 122 of the 189 cases that were added to the statewide count from Wednesday to Thursday afternoon, Health Secretary Nate Smith said.
Strategy Outlined
Smith said increased testing throughout the state will allow the department to “identify those who are infected, interrupt or stop the spread of COVID-19, and ultimately save lives.”
“I know that a week or two ago, many people expressed frustration about our lack of capacity,” Smith said. “Now, if you consider our commercial sector, the UAMS lab, the Department of Health lab and some other hospital that are doing testing as well, we’re not fully utilization that capacity, and we need to know. If people have symptoms of COVID-19 we need to have that answer, both for their benefit and also for us to know as a state.”
In the past, shortages of capacity, masks and other protective medical gear and material needed perform tests led the Health Department to issue restrictive guidelines on who providers should test.
Arkansas’ large purchases of protective equipment from overseas suppliers and shipments from hospitals’ own vendors have alleviated those concerns, state officials said Thursday.
“In my discussions with the hospitals, they’re in good shape right now,” Hutchinson said. “It’s something they always worry about for the future and that’s why you don’t want to completely deplete heir inventory of [personal protective equipment] and swabs.”
But he said most hospitals “can do this surge comfortably and still have that inventory that’s needed.”
In support of the effort Baptist Health, which already had several drive-through testing sites around the state, announced that it will add testing sites in Little Rock, North Little Rock and Fort Smith, that will be open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday and Saturday.
Any Arkansan who wants a test should call their health care provider as an initial step, Hutchinson said.
The test should be available at no charge to the patient, he said.
Laws passed by Congress in response to the pandemic require health insurers to cover the test at no cost to the patient and provide reimbursement to providers who perform the test on people without insurance.
“If they want a test, they get a test, period,” Hutchinson said.
The campaign slogan: “If you think you have symptoms, don’t wait — get tested.”
The Health Department will advertise the campaign through social media and its website, spokesman Meg Mirivel said.
Under the new strategy, the Health
Department will conduct tests itself when tracking down people who have had contact with someone known to be infected, even if those people don’t yet have symptoms.
It will also recommend screening people in certain “high risk settings,” such as hospitals and nursing homes.
That started, Hutchinson said, with the directive issued Wednesday requiring hospitals and clinics to test patients for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, before performing elective surgical procedures when those procedures are allowed to resume on Monday.
Additional settings where such testing will be recommended or required will be announced “as resources are available,” he said.
He said the state Department of Health and University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences will also work on a strategy for using blood antibody tests, which indicate whether someone has ever been infected with the virus, to study the spread of the disease in the state.
Cases Trending Upward
Even excluding the inmate cases, Hutchinson acknowledged the number of positive test results each had been trending upward for the past couple days, potentially putting the state off track to meet criteria set out in White House guidelines for easing restrictions on businesses, which Hutchinson has said he wants to start on May 4.
During afternoon press conferences, state officials reported 25 non-inmate cases on Monday, 42 on Tuesday, 36 on Wednesday and 67 on Thursday.
The guidelines call for states to have a downward trajectory of positive tests or percentage of results that are positive over a two-week period before beginning to lift restrictions.
“May 4 is closer than 14 days, and we have had a couple days in which our cases have gone up,” he said.
But he said the trend in cases is just one criteria listed in the guidelines and that White House officials have emphasized that states can “determine their own criteria and what makes sense in their state.”
“We shouldn’t look at this as the end-all in terms of that’s the only criteria we look at,” he said.
He said he’ll be considering “multiple factors” and consulting with public health officials as he decides what restrictions will be relaxed.
Limitations on court services — which had been set to be lifted on May 1 — were extended until at least May 15 by the order of the Arkansas Supreme Court on Thursday. The high court’s per curiam order also directed courts to hold any necessary hearings remotely over video or teleconference, unless doing so is “possible or feasible.”
In a news release on Thursday, the state Democratic Party said Arkansas should meet “minimum thresholds for testing” before decisions on lifting restrictions are made.
The release noted that Arkansas ranked in the bottom half of the nation in the number of tests that have been performed compared to its population, “even falling behind Mississippi.”
According to data from the COVID Tracking Project, which collects information from state health departments, Arkansas ranked 34th in that measure, with about 10.5 tests conducted per 1,000 residents.
Mississippi, which had more than 5,000 identified cases, ranked 13th, with 18.6 tests per 1,000 residents.
But the data also showed that, after previously ranking behind all its surrounding states except Texas, Arkansas had pulled ahead of Missouri, which had 9.7 tests per 1,000 residents.
“We simply aren’t where we need to be, in terms of testing availability, to be making pronouncements about when the public health threat has passed,” party Chairman Michael John Gray said in the news release.
“I’m concerned the governor and others are being pressured to send people back to work too early, to avoid having to actually provide support and a sense of security for Arkansas families through the duration of this crisis.”
The 44th and 45th deaths added to the state’s total were both Washington County residents, the first people in the county to die from the virus.
Washington County Coroner Roger Morris said a 49-year-old man died Tuesday and a 59-year-old woman died Wednesday. Both were from the Springdale area, he said.
Information from coroner’s reports and other sources also showed that two of the state’s deaths were of residents of The Waters of White Hall nursing home, where infections have been confirmed among 21 residents and 19 staff members.
Norma Jean Smith, 87, died two weeks ago at Jefferson Regional Medical Center from cardio-respiratory arrest with COVID-19 as a contributing factor, according to a Jefferson County coroner’s office report.
Smith lived for roughly two years at Waters of White Hall before she died, according to a family member, who asked not to be named.
Gerald “Bruce” Lawson, 85, died at the nursing home Monday of respiratory distress caused by COVID-19, according to a coroner’s report
Smith was admitted to Jefferson Regional on April 4 from the nursing home with symptoms consistent with pneumonia, kidney failure and congenital heart failure, the family member said.
She tested positive for COVID-19 on the same day, and and her death certificate shows she died on April 11, the family member said.
Lawson moved into the home last fall to receive wound-care treatment following a surgery, his wife, Rachel Lawson, said.
She said her husband, who had Parkinson’s disease, later moved to the long-term wing of the home.
She said she was trying to line up a 24-hour in-home care provider before bringing home her husband of 59 years when the global pandemic reached Arkansas.
She said he was diagnosed with COVID-19 on April 8.
Her husband founded Lawson Welding Supply in 1983. After retirement, he joined the staff of Family Church of White Hall, where he implemented 12-step program called Celebrate Recovery and worked as a counselor, among other tasks.
“My husband was a wonderful man who touched a lot of lives,” Rachel Lawson said.
The Health Department also said Thursday that a fifth resident of Briarwood Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Little Rock had died.
That, and the deaths at The Waters of White Hall, brought the number of publicly reported nursing home deaths linked to the virus the state to 11.
At Briarwood, the nursing home with the state’s largest outbreak, a Health Department reported showed the number of residents and staff members who have tested positive increasing by one on Thursday, making a total of 48 residents and 17 staff members.
The report also showed that a worker had tested positive for the first time at The Green House Cottages of Poplar Grove in Little Rock and at Summit Health and Rehab Center in Taylor.
That brought the number of nursing homes where at least one resident or worker who has tested positive to three.
The number known infections increased by four, to 182, among residents and by three, to 99, among staff members.
The number of hospitalized COVID19 patients statewide increased by four, to 101, on Thursday afternoon.
Twenty-three of the patients were on ventilators, an increase of one from the a day earlier.