Gov. Asa Hutchinson said Monday that President Donald Trump, a fellow Republican, made a "flippant comment" over the weekend when he told a crowd in Tulsa that testing for the coronavirus should be slowed in order to prevent new cases from being uncovered.
There were 522 new cases of the virus detected in Arkansas over a 24-hour period ending Monday, and Hutchinson announced that the state beat by eight days its goal of conducting 120,000 tests in June.
Deaths increased by two on Monday, to 227, while the total number of cases identified since the start of the pandemic rose to 16,083.
Hutchinson's declaration Monday that "we're not backing off testing" stood in contrast to those made by the president on Saturday, when Trump lamented that more testing leads to more cases being made public.
"I said to my people, 'Slow the testing down, please,'" Trump said.
The White House later said that Trump was joking.
Hutchinson said he had been given no such guidance, in conversations with Trump or Vice President Mike Pence, to slow down testing.
"It's clear that the national policy is to expand testing," Hutchinson said. "You have to look at what is the action, what is the true policy versus just what the words are."
Positivity rates for those tests conducted in June have hovered between 5% and 10%, according to the state Department of Health.
HOSPITALS ADDRESS ROOMS
Hutchinson expressed optimism Monday that total hospitalizations decreased for the first time in more than a week., falling by seven to a total of 237.
About a quarter of total hospital beds and intensive-care beds remained available for patients, according to new graphics published by the governor's office. Empty beds have been filled both by covid-19 patients and others who are undergoing elective surgeries that had been temporarily placed on hold earlier in the pandemic, both Hutchinson and his health secretary, Nate Smith, said.
Three hospital administrators from health systems in Central Arkansas -- Baptist Health, CHI St. Vincent and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences -- spoke at the governor's news conference about their capacity and ability to take transfers of patients from other regions should hospitals become overwhelmed.
"There are hospitals within the state that have adequate resources but are getting close to being capacity constrained, especially in Northwest Arkansas," said Cam Patterson, the chancellor of UAMS.
Troy Wells, the chief executive officer of Baptist Health, said that health system has adopted a "surge plan" to rapidly add 14 critical care beds if needed, on top of its normal process of accepting patient transfers.
"We communicate with each other on a regular basis, we know what our needs are, we know where we can help and we don't have a problem picking up the phone and calling one another," Wells said of the Arkansas' hospital network.
The number of people on ventilators was 61, a drop of one.
Of the counties with the most cases, Washington County, which had 2,404 cases Sunday, registered 2,531 on Monday.
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Benton County had 2,003 cases on Sunday and 2,087 on Monday.
Pulaski County cases rose from 1,514 on Sunday to 1,531.
GOVERNOR FEARS MASK BACKLASH
While continuing to implore Arkansans to wear masks in public, Hutchinson said Monday that he feared a backlash of more people refusing to wear masks if he were to make the public-health guidance a requirement.
"How do you encourage people to wear a mask?" Hutchinson said. "I think we're taking it by providing the guidelines."
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There are 15 states, plus the District of Columbia, that have issued orders requiring people to wear masks in most public settings where they cannot socially distance, according to CNN. Republican governors in Massachusetts and Maryland are among those who have issued such orders.
Hutchinson also has criticized cities that take it upon themselves to require masks in public, saying that those cities are acting outside their authority. Fayetteville has had a mask ordinance in place for about a week. Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott Jr. has directed City Attorney Tom Carpenter to draft a mask ordinance; the ordinance was to be introduced this week.
Smith, the health secretary, defended the governor's decision, saying that such an order would be useless if people chose to flout it.
"If you get a high usage rate [of masks], whether or not you have a requirement, you are likely to have decreased transmission," Smith said. "Requiring it and having a low rate of usage will give you higher rates of transmission."
CASES AT OUACHITA PRISON
The Ouachita River Correctional Unit, a 1,600-bed prison near Malvern, became the latest state prison to experience an outbreak of the coronavirus when inmates tested positive there over the weekend, officials said.
Smith said that almost all of the 85 cases in Hot Spring County announced Monday were connected to the unit, and that Health Department and prison officials were working to test all the inmates and staff members at the facility. About 800 tests have been conducted so far, he said.
The Ouachita River prison has a hospital that can hold about 120 male patients. One prisoner has been treated for covid-19 at the hospital after being transferred from the Cummins Unit in Lincoln County, according to the Arkansas Department of Corrections.
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More than 1,900 inmates have tested positive for the virus at outbreaks at the Cummins, Wrightsville, Randall L. Williams and East Arkansas Unit, all operated by the state prison system. Smaller numbers of cases have been identified at the Grimes and North Central Units.
At least 12 state inmates have died, according to Health Department records and coroners' reports.
A federal prison in Forrest City is also the center of an outbreak that has infected 764 prisoners, none of whom have died.
Information for this article was contributed by Nathan Owens of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.