Arkansas' count of coronavirus cases grew Wednesday by 649 as its official death toll from the virus rose by 21 -- the second-highest one-day increase since the start of the pandemic.
Meanwhile, Gov. Asa Hutchinson said he would "absolutely" still recommend testing for people with possible exposure to the virus who don't have symptoms, despite a change this week in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's guidance on that issue.
"That's the safest route to take," Hutchinson said. "If somebody has traveled, they're worried about where they traveled, they're asymptomatic -- go get a test, because that could protect your loved ones or somebody that you might be going to school with or your team, and so that is a good precaution, and it's helpful for us to know exactly what's out there."
The number of patients hospitalized in the state with covid-19 fell by seven, to 435.
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The patients included 108 who were on ventilators, a number that hadn't changed from a day earlier.
The state's cumulative case count grew to 58,023, while the Arkansas Department of Health's count of virus deaths rose to 732.
The number of cases in the state that were considered active increased on Wednesday by 78, to 5,390, as 550 Arkansans were newly classified as having recovered.
The growth in the state's case count Wednesday was a high for this week, after increases of 320 on Monday and 480 on Tuesday, and it came despite a slowdown in testing that state officials have attributed in part to a reduction in demand.
"You can see that today's number of cases is too high," Hutchinson said at his near-daily news conference on the pandemic, pointing to a chart showing the number of cases added to the state's count each day.
"We want to get that down, and we liked yesterday better than today for sure."
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TESTING GUIDANCE
The CDC had previously recommended testing people identified as "close contacts" of people who have tested positive, even if the contacts didn't have symptoms.
Close contacts are defined as those who have been within 6 feet of an infected person for at least 15 minutes.
"Because of the potential for asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic transmission, it is important that contacts of individuals with SARS-CoV-2 infection be quickly identified as tested," the agency said in the previous guidance on its website.
This week, the agency changed the guidance to say such people "do not necessarily need a test" unless they are "a vulnerable individual" or their health care provider or health officials recommend testing.
State Epidemiologist Jennifer Dillaha said the Health Department is still recommending testing for people without symptoms who have had contact with people who have tested positive.
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On Tuesday, laboratories reporting conducting 4,372 polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, tests of Arkansans, up from the 3,300 that state officials initially reported had been conducted on Monday.
Monday's number had grown to 3,413 as of Wednesday as more test results were reported to the Health Department.
As of Tuesday, an average of 5,945 PCR tests of Arkansans had been conducted each day this month, down from the average of 6,285 last month.
Hutchinson has set a goal of having 190,000 such tests of Arkansans conducted this month, or an average of 6,129 tests a day, in addition to 10,000 antigen tests, which are generally quicker but less accurate.
As of Monday, 3,610 Arkansans had been tested through antigen tests this month.
SCHOOL CASES
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Also on Wednesday, classes began at the Woodlawn School District in Rison after a two-day delay because an employee tested positive for the coronavirus.
Superintendent Dudley Hume said the employee, who works in a "custodial/maintenance type position," learned last week, while the district's teachers were in a meeting, that the employee's spouse had tested positive for the virus.
Hume said the employee was directed to quarantine and advised to get tested. Hume said he learned Sunday that the employee's test came back positive.
One cafeteria worker and another staff member, who is not a teacher, ended up having to quarantine because of their contact with the employee who tested positive, he said.
On Tuesday, teachers and staff members cleaned the school buildings.
Out of a staff of about 70 teachers and other employees, "I had an easy 30 people volunteer to clean the buildings, sweep them out, disinfect, whatever needed to happen to get school open," Hume said.
"They just threw their job descriptions out the window and said, 'Whatever we've got to get done, we're going to get it done because we want school tomorrow.'"
He said the school's food service vendor, K-12 Culinary Connection, sent three employees to help work in the cafeteria.
In Helena-West Helena, the director of KIPP Delta Public Schools announced that its Elementary Literacy Academy would be phasing in its return to traditional classroom instruction after an employee's positive test for the virus, and the requirement that 27 other employees quarantine, caused it to start the year with online-only instruction.
Executive Director William Hill said in-person classes will resume Friday for most prekindergarten students and special education services. Other students are tentatively scheduled to return Sept. 3.
He said the school will contact parents on Tuesday to confirm the start of in-person classes.
"We were asked to quarantine the staff members who were exposed as a precaution, which meant we had to transition to virtual learning at KIPP Delta Elementary Literacy Academy, since we no longer had enough teachers necessary to open the school in person," Hill wrote in a letter posted on his organization's website.
The Pangburn School District had four staff members in quarantine as of Wednesday after one of their fellow employees tested positive, Superintendent David Rolland said.
The district's ability to hold classes, which started Monday, hadn't been affected, he said.
"The [state Department of Education] did offer to send staff up here to help us through this," Rolland said. "As of right now, we've been able to fill our vacant positions with substitutes."
Hutchinson announced Wednesday that the state is sending out 70,000 face shields to schools across the state -- one for every school employee.
Deputy Education Commissioner Ivy Pfeffer said the state has also sent shipments of protective gear to 63 school districts in response to their requests.
Those include more than 3,500 bottles of hand sanitizer, more than 100,000 disposable masks, more than 500 boxes of gloves, more than 100 cases of disinfectant wipes and 300 N95 masks for school nurses.
LATEST DEATHS
Dillaha said "a few" of the 21 deaths added to the department's count Wednesday happened in late July and that the rest occurred "throughout August."
One was of an inmate at the Ouachita River Unit who died in July, Health Department spokeswoman Danyelle McNeill said in an email.
She said the death wasn't added to the state's count until Wednesday because of "a delayed entry into our database."
Six of the deaths were of nursing home residents, raising the department's count of such deaths to 257.
The largest one-day increase in the state's count of virus deaths happened Friday, when the number rose by 22.
The cases added to the state's total on Wednesday included 78 in Pulaski County; 44 in Jefferson County; 34 in Benton County; 31 in Sebastian County; 26 in Garland County; and 26 in Washington County.
Among prison and jail inmates, the state's count of cases rose by 56. Such increases can reflect new cases or ones that were added earlier but not immediately classified as coming from a jail or prison.
Cases among inmates also often don't show up in the state's overall total until several days after the test is performed, after information from laboratory reports is entered into a state database.
At Millcreek Behavioral Health in Fordyce, a mental and behavioral health treatment center for children, the number of cases among patients listed in a Health Department report increased from three to 46.
A Health Department report also listed 32 new cases among residents at Heritage Living Center in Conway, bringing the total to 37. Cases among staff members at the nursing home increased by five, to 10.
