Gov. Asa Hutchinson announced Friday that he had extended the deadline to file individual state income tax returns to May 17, coinciding with an extension of the deadline to file federal returns.
"Pushing back the due date for state income tax is a simple way to help Arkansans in light of the extension of the federal tax deadline. " Hutchinson said in a news release.
"The number of our COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths continues to decline, and Arkansas is quickly rebounding. As the economy and our unemployment rate continue to improve, we will do all we can to help Arkansans to recover during the public health crisis."
Hutchinson made the extension in an executive order Friday that also extended the deadline to pay the taxes.
The Internal Revenue Service announced on Wednesday the extension of the federal filing and payment deadline from April 15 to May 17.
"This continues to be a tough time for many people, and the IRS wants to continue to do everything possible to help taxpayers navigate the unusual circumstances related to the pandemic, while also working on important tax administration responsibilities," Commissioner Chuck Rettig said in a news release announcing the federal extension.
Also on Friday, John Vinson, CEO of the Arkansas Pharmacists Association, said he thinks the state is ready to make all Arkansans 16 and older eligible for the coronavirus vaccine.
Although many pharmacists have been filling their regular appointment slots, some slots at mass vaccination clinics have gone unfilled, he said.
"All appointments aren't filling up, and the criteria are confusing," he said.
"They were put in there for good reason, so that we wouldn't have chaos and anarchy for access to vaccine early on, but we are to a point as we come into April where I think we're ready to open it up in Arkansas to anybody who's of the right age who wants to be vaccinated."
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Hutchinson said it's too early to lift the eligibility criteria.
"Four days ago we opened up the vaccines to almost 1 million more Arkansans," the Republican governor said in a statement.
"Today is not the day to change it. There are long waiting lists in many parts of the state and the pharmacies and providers need to continue to reach out in the community to be sure those who are waiting get the vaccine."
Meanwhile, House Speaker Matthew Shepherd and Senate President Pro Tempore Jimmy Hickey said in a proposed House concurrent resolution filed Friday evening that Hutchinson had sent a request to the Legislative Council for a 60-day extension of the public-health emergency that the governor first declared more than a year ago.
Without the extension, the emergency is set to expire March 31.
Legislation signed by Hutchinson on Friday requires him to request the council's approval of such extensions at least 10 days before the emergency's expiration date.
The council normally meets when the Legislature is not in session. Under Act 402, however, it can meet at any time, including during a session, to consider such requests.
House Concurrent Resolution 1015 calls for the Legislature to go into an extended recess after the close of business on April 30 so it can reconvene later to redraw the state's congressional districts.
The spread of the virus in the state showed further signs of slowing on Friday, with the count of cases rising by 228 and hospitalizations hitting a new low for the year.
The increase in cases was smaller than the one a day earlier and more than 200 fewer than were added the previous Friday, March 12.
The number of patients hospitalized with covid-19 fell by 12, to 233, the lowest level since June 19.
The state death toll from the virus, as tracked by the Department of Health, rose by 14, to 5,529.
APPOINTMENTS AVAILABLE
Tuesday's start of Phase 1-C of the state's vaccination plan made the shots available to people 16-64 with health conditions putting them at risk of severe illness from the virus and certain types of "essential workers," including those with jobs in food service, transportation, the media and other industries.
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The phase also includes prison and jail inmates and others living in "high-risk" settings, such as student housing and group homes.
As of Friday, a check of pharmacy websites showed that some in Little Rock and Hot Springs some still had vaccination appointment slots open for next week.
Woodsprings Pharmacy in Jonesboro had five open for today.
On the other hand, websites for several pharmacies in Washington and Benton counties offered the option to join a waiting list but not to schedule an appointment directly.
Some said their waiting lists were closed.
Vinson said he helped two people schedule appointments on Friday who hadn't realized they were eligible for the shots under Phase 1-C.
One was an architect working on plans to redesign the association's headquarters.
"I said, 'So, have you been vaccinated yet,' and he said, 'No, not yet. I'll get it when I'm eligible,'" Vinson said. "I said, 'Well, you are eligible. You're in construction.'"
The jobs and health conditions allowing people to get the shots are listed in a six-page document, dated Wednesday, on the Health Department's website.
Architects and construction workers are among more than a dozen jobs listed under "shelter and housing."
"There's so few people that don't fit the criteria that I don't think it will dramatically change the way we schedule appointments once we open it up," Vinson said.
In the meantime, he said he's encouraging pharmacists to remove as many hurdles in the sign-up process as possible. For instance, he said, they shouldn't require patients to upload documents or provide proof of their health condition.
Don's Pharmacy in Little Rock begins taking appointments online each Saturday for the following week
"They usually crash the website, and it's always a thing, and they always fill up," pharmacist Myka Tabor said. "We're kind of anxious to see what's going to happen this Saturday with 1-C because so many people have had access to the shot."
On most days, she said the pharmacy vaccinates 70 to 80 people who get the shots in their cars in the parking lot. The pharmacy also has held several vaccination clinics for employees at businesses and schools.
On March 28, the pharmacy hopes to vaccinate 500 people at a drive-thru clinic in the parking lot of Dickey-Stephens Park. Hundreds of appointment slots were available to be scheduled for that event as of Friday through the pharmacy's website.
"We're just hoping to get more people," Tabor said. "Our parking lot's really small, so we don't have a means to get that quantity of people in our parking lot."
The appointments at West Side Pharmacy in Benton are booked for the next two weeks, but owner Blake Torres said he was hoping to open additional slots once he gets more doses.
His was one of 10 pharmacies belonging to the Community Pharmacy Enhanced Services Network that on Thursday vaccinated more 1,000 Transportation Department employees at offices around the state.
On Friday, a friend who owns a plane flew him to to deliver 1,000 doses for a walk-up clinic today at De Queen Health and Wellness Pharmacy.
"We're just doing the best we can to vaccinate as many people as quickly as possible," Torres said.
CRITERIA DEFENDED
State Epidemiologist Jennifer Dillaha said the state is "not quite ready yet" to make vaccines available to the general public because "we just don't have enough vaccine to do it."
If the state lifted the eligibility criteria, "some of the high-priority groups may have more difficulty getting vaccine," she said.
"I'm concerned about those who are at highest risk for severe illness," including people 65 and older and those 16-64 with health conditions putting them at a greater risk of complications from covid-19.
"I think as our doses increase, then we would be in a better place to do it, especially if we can get more vaccine to our medical clinics," Dillaha said.
After several weeks of increasing vaccine supply, the state next week is expected to get the same number of doses it did this week.
That includes enough to provide initial shots to 39,780 people with the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech and 28,900 with Moderna's.
The state will get 3,400 doses of the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
Through the federal retail pharmacy program, Community Pharmacy Enhanced Services Network pharmacies will get the same amount they did this week: 14,040 initial Pfizer doses and 1,000 Johnson & Johnson doses.
State officials said they didn't yet have information on how many doses Walmart will get next week through the same program.
This week it was allotted 9,100 initial Moderna doses and 1,170 initial Pfizer doses.
In an emailed response to an inquiry from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Walmart spokeswoman Courtney Paulson said only that the amount of doses the company's stores receive "depends on how much allocation we receive from states and federal government."
The response didn't say how many doses the stores in Arkansas will receive through the federal program next week.
RANKING IMPROVES
According to the Health Department, providers participating in the vaccination effort coordinated by the state had received 1,398,920 vaccine doses as of Friday morning, up 38,140 from the total as of a day earlier.
The doses those providers reported having administered, including booster shots, rose by 16,005, to 831,035.
In addition, Walmart, Walgreens, CVS and Community Pharmacy Enhanced Services Network pharmacies had been allotted 209,690 doses through federal programs, up by 15,610 from the total on Thursday.
The doses those businesses reported having administered rose by 5,540, to 93,491.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of Arkansans who had received at least one vaccine dose rose Friday by 19,895, to 635,565, representing about 21.1% of the state's population.
The number who had been fully vaccinated rose by 6,250, to 330,804, or about 11% of the population.
Among the states and District of Columbia, Arkansas moved up from 44th to 42nd in the percentage of its residents who had received at least one vaccine dose.
It continued to rank 46th in the percentage who were fully vaccinated.
Nationally, 23.3% of people had received at least one vaccine dose, and 12.6% were fully vaccinated.
FEWER HOSPITALIZED
Friday was the second day the number of hospitalized patients had fallen after rising the previous three days.
After falling for the previous two days, the number of virus patients who were on ventilators rose by three, to 50.
The number who were in intensive care units as of 2 p.m. fell by seven, to 100.
The cases added to state tallies included 155 that were confirmed through polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, tests.
The other 73 were "probable" cases, which include those identified through less-sensitive antigen tests.
The cumulative count of cases rose to 328,273.
That comprised 257,954 confirmed cases and 70,319 probable ones.
The number of cases that were considered active fell by 71, to 2,663, as recoveries outpaced new infections.
Pulaski County had the largest number of new cases, 36, followed by Benton County, which had 26; Craighead County, which had 18; Washington County, which had 11; and Sebastian and White counties, which each had 10.
Among prison and jail inmates, the Health Department's count of cases rose by one.
Correction Department spokeswoman Cindy Murphy said state prisons didn't have any new cases among inmates Friday.
The state death toll rose by nine, to 4,413, among confirmed cases and by five, to 1,116, among probable cases.
Among nursing home and assisted-living facility residents, the count of virus deaths rose by six, to 2,040.
The number of people who have ever been hospitalized in the state with covid-19 grew by 18, to 15,184.
Despite the increase in the number of virus patients on ventilators, the Health Department reported that the number who had ever been on one of the machines remained at 1,563.