Arkansas swimming pools, water parks, swim beaches and splash pads will be allowed to reopen May 22, Gov. Asa Hutchinson announced Friday.
"That should be welcome news before we go into Memorial Day, that we'll have that open," Hutchinson said.
At Hutchinson's daily news conference on the coronavirus pandemic, Department of Health Secretary Nate Smith also announced that more types of elective surgical procedures will be allowed starting Monday.
And the Republican governor outlined steps the state is taking to increase testing, including plans to enlist 70 of the Health Department's Local Health Units to collect specimens for testing in areas where the virus is spreading.
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"That alone could potentially bring us 14,000" new tests per month, Hutchinson said.
Also on Friday, the Arkansas Supreme Court directed court hearings of all types to resume May 18, "with certain measures to combat the spread of the disease to the public, including the employees of the Arkansas judiciary."
"There is no restriction on the type of case for which hearings shall resume," the court said in a per curiam order. "Courts shall be operational and the Supreme Court and the Administrative Office of the Courts have obtained personal protective equipment to assist the courts and counties in the gradual resumption of in-person proceedings where practical."
It said hearings could be held by videoconference, audio conference or in person, at the discretion of the judge.
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A March 17 order by the court had suspended in-person proceedings except for certain urgent matters or trials that were already in progress.
The announcements came as the number of cases in the state's official tally rose Friday by 53, to 3,747. No new deaths were reported.
RULES FOR POOLS
Health Department rules issued Friday require pools, beaches and other swimming spots that open May 22 to limit the number of people to half the normal capacity.
Employees must be screened for symptoms of the coronavirus, and signs must warn swimmers not to enter if they've had symptoms such as a fever of 100.4 degrees or higher in the previous two days or have had contact with someone known to have the virus in the previous week.
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Signs also must warn people that they may want to stay away if they are 65 or older or have health conditions such as high blood pressure, chronic lung disease, diabetes or asthma.
The pool's "responsible party" must ensure bathers stay at least 6 feet from one another, although families can sit and swim together.
"Facilities can begin today to contact their local health units to facilitate reopening," the rules say.
With the Health Department's approval, pools that require lifeguards can begin training at the pools immediately, the rules say.
"Lifeguard training is important because the lifeguard is there to save lives, but in this instance, we also want them to monitor the capacity to make sure the health guidelines are being met," Hutchinson said.
The rules are part the state's first phase of easing restrictions that were imposed to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
Previously announced measures allowed hair salons and barbershops to open earlier this week and restaurants to open to dine-in service on Monday.
Monday will mark the second phase of loosened restrictions for elective surgical procedures.
A new Health Department rule will allow surgeries requiring a hospital stay of up to 48 hours and on patients with severe chronic health conditions, such as poorly controlled diabetes or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Elective surgical procedures that don't require hospitalization were allowed to resume April 27 for patients whose overall health is good or who have mild chronic conditions such as moderate obesity or well-controlled diabetes.
A requirement will stay in effect for patients to be tested up to 48 hours before their procedures to confirm that they do not have covid-19.
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RAPID TESTING
Hutchinson said the tests required before surgical procedures will help the state achieve his goal to have 60,000 Arkansans, or about 2% of the state's population, tested this month.
That is in addition to 48,000 tests that were performed through the end of April.
Smith said the state had received 2,355 test results since a day earlier. That was the second time this month, and second day in a row, that the one-day total exceeded 2,000.
Late last week, the Health Department issued guidance recommending testing for women before they give birth in hospitals, which Hutchinson said could result in an additional 1,500 tests this month.
Smith said such tests would help protect workers at hospitals and help them to better care for the women.
"That's a high-risk setting," he said. "Unfortunately, a lot of pregnant women who are infected are asymptomatic, then once they deliver, they become symptomatic."
Hutchinson said portable testing machines from Abbott Laboratories that can return test results with 15 minutes could also aid the state's effort.
Smith said the Health Department has distributed 15 of the machines to health care providers, primarily hospitals, around the state.
Many hospitals have similar machines, used to test for strep throat and the flu, that could be converted to test for the coronavirus, he said.
But the cartridges needed to run the tests have been in short supply.
"We've received some, and we're pushing those out," Smith said. "We're not sure what our supply will be, but as the company scales that up, we're hopeful that we'll receive more."
He said local health units could be used to offer testing to patients with symptoms and to help test people who have come in contact with someone who has tested positive.
The Health Department also plans to work with the Minority Health Commission's mobile health unit to offer testing, which Hutchinson said could add at least 400 tests to the state's total this month.
FORREST CITY TRIP
The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences' mobile testing unit, which made stops this week in Warren and southwest Little Rock, has collected samples from 1,200 patients since it began traveling the state last month, UAMS Chancellor Cam Patterson said.
Today, he said, the unit will be making its fourth trip to Forrest City, where 301 inmates and 14 workers at a federal prison have tested positive. The Health Department, he said, will be in the area to test prison employees and their families, while the UAMS unit will test others in the community.
During the unit's first trip, shortly after the disease outbreak among inmates was discovered, it tested one person who ended up with a positive result. The next time, it found six cases. On the third trip, it found nine.
In other communities, the unit's testing has found "low single-digit positivity rates fairly consistently," Patterson said.
"That's good news for the communities," he said. "It indicates that we don't have hot spots in these communities that we're visiting, and it's unlikely that we are missing substantial populations where there are groups of positive patients."
He said UAMS has been screening women who go to the hospital to give birth and this weekend will start screening all patients who are admitted to the hospital.
He said the number of coronavirus patients at the hospital has dropped from "the high teens, frequently over 20," to seven on Friday, including one who was on a ventilator.
INMATE CASES UP
Statewide, the number of hospitalizations dropped by six on Friday, to 64, while the number on ventilators stayed the same, at 14.
At the Cummins Unit in Lincoln County, the number of inmates who have tested positive increased by 15, to 896, while the number of cases among workers increased by six, to 60.
No new cases were reported at the Federal Correctional Institution in Forrest City.
Of the 82 cases that were added to the statewide total between Thursday afternoon and Friday afternoon, 12 were test results from prison inmates that had been reported earlier but didn't show up in the official tally until they were entered into a state database.
That left 70 new non-inmate cases, which was up from the 67 non-inmate cases that were reported Thursday. The number of new non-inmate cases has increased each day since Monday, when 13 such cases were reported.
Statewide, the number of people who were considered to have recovered increased by 101, to 2,968. That left 691 cases that were considered active, a drop of 19 from a day earlier.
Of those active cases, 131 are prison inmates and 89 are nursing home residents, leaving 471 active cases in the broader community, Smith said.
He said the total number of nursing-home or assisted-living facility residents who have tested positive increased on Friday by four, to 270, and the number of cases among workers at the facilities increased by five, to 160. An additional 34 residents at the facilities have died of the virus.
A Section on 05/09/2020