Here are some Key Notes, Statistics, and Video for Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson’s news update on the COVID-19 pandemic.
Governor Hutchinson welcomed Mike Preston, the State Secretary of Commerce, and Dr. Nate Smith, State Secretary of Health. He also wished a happy 100th birthday to Louis Strickland, who was a technical Sergeant in the US Army Air Corps. Strickland currently resides in the state veterans home in North Little Rock but was there at Normandy at D-Day, according to Hutchinson.
He also referred to several graphs including the number of daily COVID-19 cases and the 7-day rolling average with and without inmate numbers.
The governor stated that he signed a state disaster declaration for 11 counties due to storm damage. This includes Arkansas, Bradley, Cleveland, Dallas, Drew, Grant, Hot Spring, Jefferson, Lincoln, Ouachita, and Phillips Counties. He also requested a federal disaster declaration for Jonesboro due to the severe tornado damage on March 28th. The governor said there is approximately a half billion dollars in storm damage in Jonesboro.
Next the Governor went over some COVID-19 statistics in the state. This includes a record 2,808 tests performed yesterday. This is 1,200 more than the previous highest daily amount. The Governor attributes this to his request to the public yesterday for a surge of tests. He said that among those tests, so far, it has been a 4.1% positive rate, including prison results. He reiterated his words from yesterday, “If you think you have symptoms, don’t wait – get tested.”
The governor then announced a 2-day Arkansas Surge Campaign. The idea is if you have symptoms like fever, cough or shortness of breath, get tested for COVID-19. Call your healthcare provider first and follow their guidance. There will be no cost for testing, whether you have insurance or not.
Hutchinson had two big announcements. The first is that certain dental procedures will be allowed to proceed on May 18th. In the interim Dr. Smith and his team at the Department of Health will be working on proper guidelines. “We’re setting [May 18th] as a goal. Obviously, if we’re not comfortable with where we are, that can change.”
Regarding lifting dental restrictions, Dr. Smith stated, “If everything goes on schedule, if we are able to see a downward trend in these cases, then May 18th is our target date for resuming office dental procedures.”
He said dental surgery is already covered under the directive for elective surgical procedures, but that requires more than would probably be appropriate for most office dental procedures. The Department of Health is putting out a guidance document with the provisions for resuming non-urgent and non-emergent elective dental services.
“We won’t go back to full everything on [May] 18th it will be a staged approach,” stated Smith. As it gets closer to May 18th, the ADH will put out a directive that will specify exactly what will be expected to resume and will focus only on that initial stage.
The second announcement is the Arkansas Economic Development Commission (AEDC) under the of Department of Commerce has approved 246 bridge loans for struggling businesses in Arkansas. That totals $5 million. That exhausts the amount of the funds that were utilized for that purpose, according to Hutchinson. He stated that those loans have retained almost 2,500 full-time jobs and about 1,000 part-time jobs.
He said there are about 100 loan applications that appeared to qualify, but weren’t fulfilled because the program ran out of money. He said he therefore approved an additional $1 million today that he feels should be sufficient to meet those additional loans that have not been fulfilled.
Sec. Preston stated there have been 26 million unemployment claims in the United States and 270,000 in Arkansas. He said they are still getting a lot of questions on the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA). This is part of the CARES Act and is for self-employed, freelancers, gig economy workers. “We have made significant progress in building that system. We hope to have that set up and ready for intake by the end of the month.” He said they estimate 125,000 at a minimum are going to file for PUA.
He also announced that the EZARC site – where you go to file online – will be offline on Saturday, April 25th from 6 a.m. until around noon, to move it to a larger mainframe, so it will be able to handle the large additional rush of claims.
“We’re currently still running up against a capacity issue, said Preston. “Moving it to a bigger mainframe is going to hopefully alleviate that, and then prepare us as we handle that Pandemic Unemployment Assistance.”
He said the call center will be open 7 days a week starting Sunday. You can call that number at 844-908-2178 to file a claim or if you have questions.
“We’re excited to see that Congress has approved some additional funds into the Payroll Protection Plan as well.” He said that on the first go-around we had 22,000 businesses in Arkansas who were able to apply and get approved for that program totaling $2.7 billion. There were about 13,000 more businesses waiting for additional funds on that account, equaling about $1.1 billion.
Preston had another announcement which includes relief for those who have lost their health insurance through recent unemployment. “Within the Department of Commerce is our Insurance Department. [They wanted to] get the word out to those with employer-based health programs that may have been lost in the last 60 days,” said Preston.
“If you have lost your job, lost your health insurance because of this pandemic, it’s possible that they might qualify for a Marketplace qualifying health plan.” He said you can visit the Arkansas Insurance Department website or call the toll free number at 844-355-3262.
Dr. Nate Smith, State Secretary of Health listed the current statistics for COVID-19 patients below:
- 46 deaths, up 1
- 2741 cases, up 276
- 1763 current active cases
- 104 hospitalizations, up 3
- 932 recovered, up 30
- Dr. Smith noted this is ⅓ of the total cases.
- 25 on a ventilator, up 1
- Nursing homes
- 34 homes currently under investigation
- 176 resident cases, up 2
- 102 staff cases, up 3
- 285 healthcare workers, up 10
- Cummins State Prison
- 690 inmates cases
- 30+ staff cases
- Forrest City Federal Corrections
- 79 inmate cases
- 11 staff cases
Statistics for Saline County as of the end of the day yesterday were:
Positives 54
Negatives 742
Recoveries 31
Deaths 1
The link for case numbers the entire state is: https://adem.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/f533ac8a8b6040e5896b05b47b17a647