Gov. Asa Hutchinson reported 304 new positive cases of COVID-19 today at his daily update. 262 of those cases came from the Cummins prison data that was still being manually entered yesterday. 670 inmates and 10 staff members from the prison have tested positive so far.
Arkansas has 2,227 cases of COVID-19 with 1,375 being active. 249 cases involve healthcare workers and 135 cases involve nursing homes. There are currently 29 nursing homes in Arkansas under active investigation for the virus. There was one new death to report, bringing the total to 43. Hospitalizations have decreased to 86, however three more individuals are on a ventilator.
Gov. Hutchinson also announced a new executive order he signed to establish the Governor’s COVID-19 Testing Advisor Group. Nine members have been appointed by the Governor to develop a strategy for adequate testing capabilities.
“I hope through this we can have some short-term goals in order to enhance the testing quickly here in the state of Arkansas, determine what the challenges are in the supply chain and continue to address those, and thirdly, look at long-term goals as well as looking at next fall.” Gov. Hutchinson said.
Dr. Smith noted that Arkansas seems to be on the downtrend in terms of the community transmission of COVID-19.
“If you take out the positives from the correctional system, our numbers of new cases are going down,” Dr. Smith said. “Last week, we were looking at consistently 70 a day and now we are looking at, on average, about half of that.”
READ MORE: Hutchinson Establishes COVID-19 Testing Advisory Group