COVID-19 update

EDITOR’S NOTE: As a service to our readers, The Sentinel-Record will publish updates released each weekday by the city of Hot Springs and the state of Arkansas.

The following stats were shared Wednesday at Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s daily COVID-19 news conference in Little Rock and posted on the Arkansas Department of Health’s website:

• 17,375 cumulative cases, up 697 from Tuesday.

• 269,981 tests reported, up 5,489 from Tuesday.

• 6.4% infection rate, up from 6.3% Tuesday.

• 5,567 active cases, up 346 from Tuesday.

• 11,568 recoveries, up 348 from Tuesday.

• 267 hospitalizations, up 19 from Tuesday.

• 240 deaths, up three from Tuesday.

• 629 cumulative nursing home residents infected, up five from Tuesday.

• 58 cases on a ventilator, up one from Tuesday.

• 191 cumulative cases in Garland County, up eight from Tuesday.

• 5,903 tests reported for Garland County, up

97 from Tuesday.

• 3.2% infection rate, no change from Tuesday.

• 160 recoveries in Garland County, up two from Tuesday.

• 30 active cases in Garland County, up six from Tuesday.

• One death in Garland County, no change from Tuesday.

The 697 new cases reported Wednesday pushed the rolling seven-day average to a new peak. Wednesday’s 538.43 average was 8% higher than the previous peak Tuesday and 19% higher than Monday’s average. The moving average has increased 435% in six weeks, and the cumulative infection rate has gone up 23% over that time.

The net increase of 19 COVID-19 patients in hospitals Wednesday pushed hospitalizations to an all-time high of 267, a 350% increase from six weeks ago.

The eight new cases reported Wednesday in Garland County raised its rolling seven-day average to 3.28, the county’s highest moving average in 10 days. Active cases increased from 24 to 30.

“It’s headed in a trajectory that’s up statewide that is a concern,” Hutchinson said of the statewide rolling average. “We need to do better than that.”

Hutchinson said the 350 contact tracers contracted by the state and expected to start work next month are insufficient for the state’s growth in new cases. He said he’ll ask the CARES Act Steering Committee to recommend an additional

$22 million be appropriated from the state’s $1.25 billion in federal coronavirus relief to double the number of contract contact tracers.

“This is absolutely essential,” he said.

Dr. Nate Smith, Health Department secretary, said the original contract was based on 1,000 active cases. The Health Department reported more than 5,500 active cases Wednesday, a more than 550% increase from six weeks ago. Health Department personnel who would normally track outbreaks of other diseases have been pressed into service as coronavirus case investigators. The Health Department said it has more than 200 people doing contact tracing for the virus.

“Hopefully that will be more than sufficient,” Smith said of the 750 contract contact tracers. “Right now we have an insufficient capacity to do the job that we need in terms of contact tracing.”

The state’s goal of 120,000 tests in June was reached earlier this month. Hutchinson set a goal Wednesday of testing 180,000 people in July, a number Smith said should be viewed as a floor and not a ceiling.

“We’re going full guns on the testing,” he said. “We need to because that’s what we need to do to identify individuals as soon as possible so we can interrupt the spread of COVID-19.”

Healthy Connections announced Wednesday that its pop-up testing tour across the central and southwest part of the state facilitated more than

2,000 tests in five weeks.

Northwest Arkansas’ growth in new infections

over the last six weeks has pushed the state’s epidemiological curve to new heights, but Smith said the region’s growth rate has stabilized over the last week. Benton and Washington counties were supplanted by Hot Spring County Wednesday as the state leader in new infections.

The Health Department reported 168 new cases in Hot Spring County, explaining that almost all of them are in or associated with the outbreak in Malvern’s Ouachita River Unit of the Arkansas Department of Correction.

The Health Department’s Nursing Home and Congregate Settings Report Wednesday showed no change from the 128 ORU infected inmates in Tuesday’s report.

“We’re starting to see some progress in the (northwest),” Smith said. “We have other areas where we have increased cases coming up. We have this outbreak we’ve detected within in the Ouachita River Unit.

We’re going to focus our attention on those other areas as we continue to bring the outbreak in the northwest part of the state under control.”