26 test positive for COVID-19 at Adult and Teen Challenge
Adult and Teen Challenge of Arkansas has experienced an outbreak of 26 positive
COVID-19 cases, causing the entire campus to go on a mandatory quarantine.
Tim Culbreth, executive director, said when he saw the outbreak unfolding, he reached out to the county and the Arkansas Department of Health for help.
ATCA, formerly known as Teen Challenge of Arkansas, is a nonprofit organization that operates a residential facility at 155 Walnut Valley Road. Its mission is to provide faith-based help for people who struggle with “life-controlling problems,” such as addiction, according to its website.
Fourteen students and 12 staff members, including Culbreth, have tested positive for
COVID-19 since April 3. No one has been hospitalized.
“Everything was going well and then I had a staff (member) to test positive and then when I had a second staff (member) test positive and a student test positive, that’s when I knew we had to start moving toward a worst-case scenario,” Culbreth said. “How they tested positive? I do not know. … It’s telling me this (virus) is very unpredictable.”
He said out of the 26 people who have tested positive, only three are showing symptoms.
“Right now the staff, physically they’re clear, no fever,” Culbreth said. “We check the students
three times a day for temperature and how they’re feeling. So far, everyone is doing well.”
Currently, no resident is being sent home, and only a few staff members are allowed to leave the campus.
“The best thing we can do is to contain it on campus while everyone heals,” Culbreth said. “Even for residents who haven’t tested positive. There is such a thing as false negatives and that has me concerned.”
Staff members who have tested negative for the virus will leave campus when required errands need to be run, and Culbreth said he and another staff member are allowed to commute from their homes to the campus without making any stops in between.
Culbreth noted he is hoping the outbreak is coming close to an end.
“Based upon the fact the Health Department is already releasing several staff who tested positive,” he said. “Right now, I live one day at a time and enjoy the fact I’m getting daily reports that everyone is doing well.”
Culbreth said as the organization works with ADH, following its guidelines, the department has been a “tremendous help.”
“When they made the decision to test all of our students, that allowed us to be out front; otherwise this would have been unfolding gradually and it could have been very bad,” he said.
ADH said Friday that it coordinated with ATCA on testing of students and staff and implementing isolation measures. It wasn’t certain how the outbreak started but speculated an asymptomatic person may have brought it to campus.
As of Thursday, no other congregate living areas in the county had multiple confirmed cases, according to a statewide list ADH provided Friday that included long-term care facilities and correctional settings. It’s unclear if the ATCA outbreak caused the jump in confirmed cases ADH reported for the county last week. Cases
increased from about 80 to nearly 100.
The state reported 107 confirmed cases in the county as of Friday afternoon. The county’s 1,420 test results ranked among the most in the state on a per capita basis, making it one of the few counties with results greater than 1% of its population. The 7.5% of tests that returned positive results was higher than the 7.2% rate statewide.