Arkansas COVID-19 active cases up to 4,383

(06/15/20)  Arkansas COVID-19 active cases up to 4,383 

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

• 12,917 total confirmed cases, up 1,343 from 11,574 on Friday.
• 4,383 active cases, up 619 from Friday.
• 8,352 recoveries, up 745 from Friday.
• 182 deaths, up six from Friday.
• 206 cases requiring hospitalization, up three from Friday.
• 45 cases on a ventilator, down four from Friday.
• 162 cases in Garland County, up eight from Friday.
• 135 recoveries in Garland County, up one from Friday.
• 1 death in Garland County, no change from Friday.

Since Sunday, there have been 416 new COVID-19 cases, with 390 from the community. The counties with the highest number of new cases since yesterday are Washington (126; approximately 50% have Spanish surnames), Benton (53; 18 cases came from seven households), Pope (25) and Sevier (20; approximately 90% had Spanish surnames).

There was a record-number 7,063 test results compiled since yesterday. The preliminary positivity rate is 4.7%, which is down from Friday’s adjusted positivity rate that went above 10%. At the halfway point in the month of June, the total number of tests is well on its way to the 120,000 mark with a total of 68,069.

The governor said he expects over the next week that the case count will continue to go up as he doesn’t believe the state has reached the second peak, “which very well could be our first peak,” he said. “It’s really at an important time in terms of this pandemic. We obviously have a significant increase in cases in Northwest Arkansas, and we have a temptation to let down our guard because we’ve been dealing with it for a long time. I hope that everyone knows that we’re taking it seriously and our admonition continues to be to implement our strategy, which is to protect yourself and protect others by social distancing and wearing a mask when you’re out in public.”

Hutchinson also signed three executive orders. The governor said they were initiated by the general assembly, who also supported the use of the governor’s executive order rather than the calling of a special session at this point in the pandemic. The three executive orders include workers’ compensation coverage, medical immunity and business liability. For the workers’ compensation order, COVID-19 is considered an occupational disease, it must be causal connection between employment and the disease and it extends during the public health emergency. In the medical immunity order, health care workers and providers are authorized to use crisis standards of care to respond to treat COVID-19 patients, health care providers as emergency workers are immune from civil liability and immunity is during the public health emergency and does not extend to willful, reckless or intentional misconduct. Under the business liability order, all businesses and their employees are immune from civil liability as a result of exposure to COVID-19, a presumption that the actions are not willful or reckless if the business owner substantially complies with public health directives, immunity does not extend to worker compensation benefits and it is effective today until the emergency is terminated.

Finally, Hutchinson thanked Walmart for donating 7,000 masks to Northwest Arkansas – 3,000 N95 masks to Washington Regional Medical Center and to Mercy Hospital in Rogers and 4,000 three-ply masks to the Community Clinic, Arkansas Coalition of the Marshallese, Hispanic Women’s Organization of Arkansas and Arkansas United.