By Ray King
An additional 262 cases of Corona virus have been reported at Cummins Prison in the past 24 hours and State Health Officer Dr. Nate Smith said Tuesday more may be added as some results of tests at the prison have not come in.
Speaking at Governor Asa Hutchinson’s daily press briefing on COVID-19, Smith said 10 staff members have also tested positive, bringing the total of confirmed cases to 670. He said while the number of cases from the prison is alarming, the prison is the ideal setting to control the outbreak and much easier to control that were those with the virus out in the community.
Asked about the federal correctional facility in Forrest City, Smith said a second group from the federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC) plan to return to the prison to do additional testing and said based on what state officials have learned from Cummins, the test results “may show more testing is necessary.”
The Governor was asked about a lawsuit filed against the state alleging that inmates are in danger because of COVID-19, Hutchinson said he received the information earlier in the day and had not read it in detail. One of the demands in the lawsuit is that more testing be done and the Governor said that more testing is being done at Cummins than what is done for the general population and feels that the inmates are getting the proper health care.
Hutchinson said the total number of confirmed cases Tuesday was 2,227, an addition of 304 over the total from Monday of 1,923. Of those new cases, 262 were from the prison, meaning that only 42 were not prison related. Smith said of the 2,227 reported cases, 1,375 are active.
Eighty-six people are hospitalized because of COVID-19, that’s seven less than on Monday, and there has been one more death, bringing the state’s total to 43.
Looking at overall numbers excluding the prison, Smith said that last week, Arkansas was averaging about 70 new cases per day and this week, the average is about half that. Also, numbers from various counties appear show that there are, in Smith’s words, “no hot spots” or areas where the number of cases is increasing rapidly.
Asked if one particular group was pressuring him to relax some of his directive on reopening businesses, Hutchinson said the state did not close most retail shops but many of those shops closed on their own because of a lack of businesses and one of the challenges is going to be to build customer confidence into going into those businesses again.
“We’re getting pressure from everybody,” Hutchinson said, mentioning barber and beauty shops where most people are self-employed and whose customers are demanding that the businesses reopen.
“We want to make sure they’re safe,” the Governor said.
