The state of Arkansas has officially surpassed a cumulative number of 50,000 COVID-19 cases today (Aug. 10) with 50,028.
Gov. Asa Hutchinson reported 645 new cases at his daily press conference. The number of hospitalizations has decreased by six to 508 while the number of deaths has increased by 11 to 555. There are currently 117 patients on a ventilator, up two from yesterday.
Pulaski County had the highest number of new cases with 61. Sebastian County followed behind with 52, Garland County with 50, Saline County with 43, Jefferson County with 40, Craighead County with 32, Benton County with 21 and Independence County with 20.
Yesterday, 5,341 COVID-19 tests were completed. Since the beginning of August, there have been 52,946 tests completed across the state.
The governor also provided a graph with the daily average of new COVID-19 cases in Arkansas by week.
“This is something that I believe is instructive because you can see the last week which was when our mask mandate was really expected to start having some impact,” he said. “I believe that you can see the impact of the mask mandate with a reduction of the cases from where it was two weeks ago at the peak right at 800 in terms of average and now we’ve declined that well over 100.”
He pointed out that if Arkansans continue to comply and socially distance, then “we will continue to see that success.”
According to Secretary of Health Dr. Jose Romero, the number of recoveries has increased by 678 to 42,139. There are 7,343 active cases with 6,450 in the community, 886 in correctional facilities and 52 in nursing homes.
“It’s important to keep in mind that we shouldn’t slack as we start to see these better numbers,” Romero said. “Everybody starts to say ‘yes, we are beating the curve’ or ‘we’re seeing less,’ but we need to keep this up because if we don’t then these will come back again.”
READ MORE: Governor’s Address – Arkansas’ New Secretary of Health