Monday COVID Update: Nearly 1100 new cases since Saturday; Order coming regarding police training

Here are some Key Notes, Statistics, and Video for Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson’s news update on the COVID-19 pandemic, along with updates and guidance from Dr. Nate Smith, Secretary of Health, and Steuart Walton, entrepreneur and Chairman of the Economic Recovery Task Force.

The governor began with some charts to show progress of the virus in the state, including some regional breakdown.

The governor had two announcements, the first being that the National guard has been deactivated for now. Secondly, Hutchinson spoke with local protest leaders and community leaders recently and has an upcoming executive order to be announced at 11:00 a.m. Tuesday, June 9th, regarding a task force for police training, certifications, and standards.

There were 450 new cases reported on Saturday, 335 on Sunday, and 314 on Monday.

The governor spoke to whether the state will take a regional approach to reopening. “We’re not ready to make any jumps or changes in that direction. I will continue to evaluate exactly what is the option if there should be an option for how we’re looking at the state,” said Hutchinson. “When we look at what we know, then it is helpful to make decisions on where we might need to go.”

With that, he gave a list of “six things that I know and have confidence in right now.”

All the regions of this state are at different stages of the epidemic and with different trend lines.
The future spread is not predictable in terms of geography. The governor pointed out that a few weeks ago Northwest Arkansas had very few cases but it’s now the fastest growing number of new cases in the state.
The data shows that cases aren’t related to lifting of restrictions.
Increased testing helps us to shine the flashlight on where the challenges are, that we face, and the new cases and how we address those.
Self discipline and social discipline is a constant that we need to continue to exercise in the state of Arkansas, regardless of whether cases go up or down, and that’s true until we get a vaccine.
The economy must keep moving and generating and creating jobs and providing people the opportunity to make a living and support their business.

Dr. Smith reiterated that his office isn’t seeing a relationship between new cases and the businesses that have reopened. Of the active cases about 2% have reported having been to a restaurant in the last 14 days. He stated that there are clusters in prisons, nursing homes, and essential industries, for example, the poultry industry.

Steuart Walton spoke for the Economic Recovery Task Force. “Small businesses do continue to suffer an outsized portion of this impact than large businesses but there are certainly some numbers out there that back up what I think a lot of us feel, which is that Arkansas on balance is handling the situation pretty well and that we’re doing better than some of our neighboring states with respect to where our economies.”

Walton also said the Arkansas Ready for Business website has launched a Spanish language translation of the website.

Dr. Smith listed the current statistics for COVID-19 patients below:

155 deaths, up 1

9740 total cases, up 314

Of the new cases: