Apr 13, 2020

Governor Asa Hutchinson Arkansas COVID-19 Briefing April 13

Arkansas Briefing April 13
RevBlogTranscriptsCOVID-19 Briefing & Press Conference TranscriptsGovernor Asa Hutchinson Arkansas COVID-19 Briefing April 13

Asa Hutchinson: (00:00)
Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to the daily COVID-19 update that we took a leave of absence for the last two days. But it’s important to re-engage on this from a communication standpoint and make sure everyone understands exactly where we are in Arkansas, what’s ahead and what we need to be doing. I am joined of course by Secretary Nate Smith, and Director A.J. Gary of Department of Emergency Management.

Asa Hutchinson: (08:35)
Let me first give you a case update. And the case update shows that yesterday we had 1,280 cases. There’s been an addition of 130 new cases, so we have a total of 1,410 cases. We have 74 that are hospitalized and we have 30 deaths. And Dr. Smith will elaborate on some of those statistics.

Asa Hutchinson: (09:07)
I did want to talk about some of the new cases that we have. As I mentioned, we have 130 new cases. Of those, we have a situation in the Federal Correctional Institute in Forrest City in which we have been engaged in significant testing through our Department of Health, and that has resulted in 55 positives within the Federal Correctional Institute there in Forrest City. That’s 35 or more inmates, staff, and one independent contractor, all within that confined environment.

Asa Hutchinson: (09:49)
In addition, we have our first real significant breakout of the virus in our state prison, which is our Cummins Maximum Prison Unit in which we have a maximum security unit, one barrack, that has tested 43 out of 46 positive in that one barracks.

Asa Hutchinson: (10:14)
And so you can see from these two, both FCI and in Forrest City, as well as the prison in Cummins, that we have 98 of our cases are from a shelter-in-place environment. And so you have to put that in perspective as to where we are in terms of our testing. The testing that comes from the commercial labs is still at very, very low percent positive. But as we concentrate in one of our prisons where there’s been an outbreak, you have a very high percent of positives. And we focus our testing energy and capability to identify and isolate the breakout of the virus within that environment. Obviously, you want to be able to contain it.

Asa Hutchinson: (11:05)
Secretary Kelly, we met with today, is working very hard to make sure that, first of all, we do the right amount of testing there. So that’s our focus. Secondly, that we isolate them within barracks that have tested positive. And then they have the proper medical treatment that obviously everyone expects for anyone who has come down with this virus.

Asa Hutchinson: (11:31)
And so that’s a little bit of report on where we are. The restriction on visitors has been in place from really day one there within the prison environment. And that restriction continues. I did want to go to a couple of graphs today, and if we can pull the first graph up. And this is the number of newly admitted COVID-19 patients, which-

Asa Hutchinson: (12:03)
… are really the new hospitalizations each day that occur. So you can see on the first day, we have March 23, we have five newly hospitalized. Of course we had a spike. We had zero and then it goes up to 28 newly hospitalized. And so these are the each day numbers that you can see for new hospitalizations. Whenever there’s a blank, that means there’ve been zero that have been newly hospitalized. And if you go on down to the latest timeframe, which is April 12th there, we have an additional number that are hospitalized, but you can see the hospitalizations, while it peaked there about April 9th, it has gone steadily down or steady state since that time. If you go to the next slide, which is the number of currently admitted patients, which is really our hospitalizations, and this is one of the things I’ve said from the very beginning that we should be tracking.

Asa Hutchinson: (13:07)
And so you start March 23, we had 10 that were hospitalized. And these are total numbers that are hospitalized. And then of course it goes up where it’s 48 and then it goes up to 65, and then it peaks with about 85 that were hospitalized on April 11th. And since then, you can see that the hospitalizations have been steady or on somewhat of a decline. And then if you go to the last graphic, which is the number of active cases versus recovered cases, Dr. Smith reviewed this I believe it was last week. We’ve updated it of course to the current. So let me describe what you see here. First on the top line, you have the number of positive cases as a whole, and they’re always going to go up because it’s a cumulative number and you add to that every day. So the top line is always going to go up and it is, as we indicated, today right over 1400. And then the second line is the number of active cases.

Asa Hutchinson: (14:24)
And of course that is after you subtract the recovered cases, which is the blue lines. The blue line is the recovered cases. And then this second line is the active cases that we have, which is the differential. And you can see that that continues to go up, but it is while the recovered cases continues as well. And then the bottom line are the number of deaths, which is a low number that is fairly low in comparison to the other cases. And so here’s the message that I want to leave today with this slide being left up there just for a second. And that is that there’s not any indication that we have reached the peak yet. Now, we’re hoping that the peak comes sooner versus later. But I’ll remind you that as you flatten, and that’s what we’ve done, as you flatten the number of cases that you have and reduce the increase, then you’re going to extend the peak time period, which is the objective that we’ve had.

Asa Hutchinson: (15:37)
And so the University of Washington first had our, about two weeks ago, they had our peak coming at April 24th. Now they’ve increased it now to April 29th. Why did they do that? It’s because we flattened the curve, but that extends the trend line as well. And so keep in mind everyone that we have not yet reached our peak both in terms of projections but also in terms of where we see the trend line going. And so it’s not a time to let up, it’s not a time to decrease our intensity on social distancing, on voiding the gatherings of more than 10 and also on wearing face masks when you cannot appropriately social distance. I’m amazed at how well the Arkansans are doing on this. I want to thank you. But it’s not a time to let up in that way. Now, this last weekend, you saw a number of references about when are we going to open up on some of the talk shows, and one of our leading doctors used the phrase, we might have a rolling reentry program where we open up businesses again.

Asa Hutchinson: (16:57)
And so the conversation is starting nationally about that. I want to caution that we cannot change the direction we’re going at the present time. Now is not the time to let up. I want to keep us going in this same direction because you can see that we’re still going up in the trend line. We have flattened the rate, we have decreased the growth rate, but we’re not there yet. And so everyone, do not let up despite some of the national conversation. And the national conversation is coming because people have stayed cloistered as long as they can stay in being cloistered, and they want to see things return to some level of normality. I think we in Arkansas have kept a consistent pace about this. We’ve lowered the trajectory, but we should not give up and quit on this. We can deal with this. And we’ve got to be able to do that. And so my admonition is that we have to assume that we have not reached our peak yet, so let’s stick with it.

Asa Hutchinson: (18:03)
And then secondly, until we have reached our peak and are confident of that, then we’ve got to wear our mask. We’ve got to socially distance. And you’ve got to avoid large gatherings. And then I do want to look to the future for a second. And the future is about figuring out what we do when we are confident that we’re at the peak and on the downward side of that slope. And I’m announcing today the appointment of a medical advisory board for COVID-19 post peak. And let me rephrase that name again. It’s a medical advisory board for COVID-19 post peak. I am interested in looking ahead as to when we start going down that downward slope. I’ve asked Dr. Nate Smith to chair this, but we’ll be releasing the names of seven highly skilled epidemiologists and others that have engaged in infectious diseases that will be the medical advisory team that will help give us guidance as to what does it look on the downside of that slope, what should be our criteria that we look at?

Asa Hutchinson: (19:17)
What do we need to do to avoid peaks in the future? What do we need to do to not see a resurgence of this? And how can we live in this environment? What kind of mitigation efforts do we need to have in place? That’s what I’ll be tasking them to do and to help develop the criteria that should be used to keep us on the down slope of new cases and to avoid the peaks later in the year. And so with that, I want to thank Dr. Smith again for his leadership and ask him to make any comments.

Dr. Nathaniel Smith: (19:54)
Thank you governor. Want to give a little bit more detail on the numbers that the governor shared. The governor shared that we have 130 new cases today compared to yesterday at this time, and that is our single largest increase in a 24 hour period of time. Over the weekend, we had in the 50s increase each day, which had been less than we had been averaging prior to that. The reason for the increase I’ll go over as I go through our lab numbers. We had 1,030 test reports yesterday, 883 of those were from commercial labs, and the positivity rate was 2.9%, which is about what we had been seeing. We also had 53 from UAMS lab, and their positivity rate was 5.7 which is about what we had been seeing before. 94 of those were from the Arkansas Department Of Health public health lab, and 71% of those were positive. And the reason for that is we were selectively testing populations, particularly incarcerated populations, and so of the 67 new positives from the Arkansas Department Of Health public health lab, most of them were from the commons unit and other incarcerated or congregate settings.

Dr. Nathaniel Smith: (21:26)
These are high risk settings where COVID-19 can spread very easily, very rapidly, but they’re also closed systems and they don’t necessarily represent the situation in Arkansas in general. But in the commons unit, as the governor’s mentioned, we had 43 test positive in a barracks of 46. So you can understand how efficiently COVID-19 can be spread in that setting. We have also had in our Little Rock Community Corrections, over a period of a couple of weeks, we’ve had 27 staff test positive. We now have had five of 15 inmates test positive. So we’ll be testing all of the inmates at the Little Rock Community Corrections. And the governor has mentioned the Federal Correctional Institute in Forest City, we are up to 46 inmates, eight staff and one contractor. The testing strategy there is not entirely under our control because it’s a federal facility. The CDC director, Robert Redfield, has indicated that CDC will be taking the lead on that investigation, and their plan is to implement a risk based testing strategy, but we can expect to have additional positives from there as well. There is also a smaller facility, a drug rehab treatment facility in central Arkansas, that had 15 residents test positive and nine staff, so 24 total. So you can see we had quite a few positives because we were testing in our highest risk settings, and we’ll continue to do that. That’s the way it’s most strategic for us to use our testing capacity at the Arkansas Department Of Health public health lab. The governor mentioned we have a total now of 1,410 cumulative cases, and that’s 989 active cases. We have one new county, which is Jackson County. We have 74 currently hospitalized. That includes eight new hospitalizations, newly hospitalized from yesterday. We have a total of 28 on a ventilator, and we are up to 30 deaths as the governor mentioned before. We have 193 healthcare workers…

Dr. Nathaniel Smith: (24:01)
… who have tested positive of whom 58 have recovered. The last thing that I’d like to mention may seem very unrelated to what I’ve just been talking about, summer camp. Around the dinner table last night, my college age son mentioned that he was planning on going back and being a camp counselor this summer as he’s done for the last few years, and I suggested to him that they may not be having summer camp, and that was a little bit of a surprise to him, but it shouldn’t be a surprise to the rest of us.

Dr. Nathaniel Smith: (24:44)
Although there’s a big difference between summer camp and a maximum security unit, to the COVID-19 virus, there’s not that much of a difference. You’re bringing together people from all over the country, putting them in a highly congregate setting for a week or so, and then you send them back. Even if we are on the downside of cases at that point, that’s a high risk setting for a resurgence. So we will be sending out some guidance on summer camps just to help those who were involved in that to plan and prepare. With that, I’ll turn it back over to the governor.

Asa Hutchinson: (25:26)
With that, we’ll take any questions.

Speaker 5: (25:30)
What measures have been in place in the prisons, even prior to this. Because it seems like, like you guys said, once it blew up, it really got a hold of the both of those facilities.

Asa Hutchinson: (25:42)
Well actually, in terms of Cummins, it’s one barrack. So you think of the whole prison complex, then you have one open barrack, and in that barrack you had, I believe it was 43 out of 46 that tested positive. So as Dr. Smith says, it shows how quickly it can disperse. In terms of the measures that were in place prior to this, the key is there was no outside visitors. And that was put into place immediately because that’s what brings the outside contact in. So we prohibited outside visitors coming in. You have to remember what a hardship that is for the prisoners, but it’s necessary.

Asa Hutchinson: (26:20)
And then secondly, as I pointed out, the prison industries have started making masks internally, and so they have masks that are available for the guards as well as for the inmates, which would be not N95 masks, surgical masks, but a mask that they can use in and separate each other from the spread of the virus. And then it’s the cleaning aspect of it as well, so all those things have been put into place, putting those protective measures that come in. And despite all of that, we’ve had this one break out, but you contain it and hopefully that it will not be impacting any other barracks. We’ll have to wait and see.

Speaker 5: (27:08)
Do we know yet how it got in there or kind of what the … I guess the patient zero of the prisons were?

Asa Hutchinson: (27:13)
Dr. Smith, I’ve heard something, but you’d better comment.

Dr. Nathaniel Smith: (27:18)
At this point we don’t have any staff who have tested positive, but we’ll be testing staff and we’ll be sampling inmates from other barracks as well to make sure we’re not missing anyone. Part of the challenge in a congregate living setting there is there are people who are infected and who have no symptoms or mild symptoms. And in a situation where people are all living together, it’s quite possible that the virus can spread even from people who don’t have symptoms or have minimal symptoms. So it’s … the fortunate thing about that kind of setting is that it’s not that hard to contain it because people aren’t going out and about. They’re not leaving the prison, but it is challenging for the prison to be able to do the testing and segregate those who test positive from those who test negative. But we’re advising them and working closely with them.

Speaker 5: (28:23)
Has the population been hospitalized and put on vents or anything?

Dr. Nathaniel Smith: (28:26)
I believe that one individual from Cummins has been hospitalized, but I’m not sure of their status.

Speaker 6: (28:36)
Are you worried about the disease spreading to other barracks?

Dr. Nathaniel Smith: (28:36)
Certainly there’s a concern there, which is why we’ve already worked with them to make sure that the staff who work with that barracks don’t work with other barracks, that we don’t have inmates going from one barracks to another, and that those in that barracks won’t be mingling with others either during recreation time or during mealtime.

Speaker 7: (29:03)
There are some who would like to see the governor use his pardon and commutation powers to thin the ranks of inmates.

Asa Hutchinson: (29:14)
Well this is a probably an example of where that would be unwise. If you look at the … there’s a reason that these inmates are in a maximum security unit, and so I don’t see that happening. Now if it spreads more broadly, there are potential plans that we could look at some offenders that are close to their release date, but we’re not close to having to do that now. Let’s see where we go from here. Whenever it’s not in any other barracks or any other prison units, then there’s not any reason to do it in those facilities. And then this one is in a maximum security unit for a reason. I mean, they’re there for a reason, and so we don’t want to release those and we hope that it is contained there. So that’s something you have to look at day by day, and situation by situation. But I don’t see … hopefully that won’t have to happen.

Speaker 8: (30:24)
What’s been the average hospital stay for any of these patients?

Dr. Nathaniel Smith: (30:32)
It’s difficult for us while we’re still in it to know exactly what the average is because there are many of the patients who are still hospitalized. Of those who have been discharged, we did that analysis last week, and found that the average was six days. That is a … that may have changed since then, but I think six, seven days is about what we would expect with this. There are certainly those who were in the hospital much longer. There’s some who have been in the hospital, really still are in the hospital so … those who get on a ventilator, we know from our national experience, it tends to be more like two weeks or more on a ventilator, so that’s certainly longer than that shorter six day period.

Asa Hutchinson: (31:20)
Is there a … go ahead question here, then we’ll take one remotely.

Speaker 9: (31:25)
Yeah. At the federal prison, is the CDC doing its own testing or is that the health department doing testing on behalf of the CDC?

Dr. Nathaniel Smith: (31:36)
In terms of the federal correctional institute in Forrest City, up to this time we’ve been advising them and working with them on that. We had a team from CDC who came down the latter part of last week and then left on Saturday. They gave some recommendations, but they’ll continue to engage that prison. And a particular piece that’s not yet been fully sorted out is a risk-based testing strategy. We have done some testing for that federal facility, but there are quite a few inmates there that would take a while with our current capacity to test all of those.

Speaker 5: (32:19)
Let me …

Speaker 10: (32:19)
I have a question from Memphis. How …

Asa Hutchinson: (32:24)
[crosstalk 00:32:24] Just one second here. Just one second. Let me add to that. And Dr. Smith, you can correct me if I’m in error here, but all of the testing that has been done has been through, and statistically has been added to, our numbers here. So whether it’s a CDC number or Department of Health test, those numbers count in our Arkansas statistics. Is that correct, Dr. Smith? Just wanted to make that point. And now let’s go remotely. Please go ahead and give your question.

Speaker 10: (32:53)
Sure. This is [inaudible 00:32:55] from WMPN Memphis. I have a couple of questions. First, Governor Hutchinson, can you please clarify what you mean by a shelter in place scenario … since this outbreak has been in a shelter in place scenario, because corrections officers are still leaving to and from those facilities. Also from in regards to Forrest City, we’ve received multiple complaints that there isn’t soap for inmates, multiple showers do not work, there was a recent sewage backup. How are those issues being addressed? And lastly, what did the CDC do there? How many inmates did they test?

Asa Hutchinson: (33:31)
Well, first of all, in terms of the phrasiology that I used, Dr. Smith used the term congregate settings. Well a congregate setting is a closed environment, which is a prison setting, and that’s the context in which I said they are … in essence all the prisoners are sheltering in place. They are in a congregate type setting. Certainly there’s independent contractors, there’s people that come in and out of that environment, but they are sheltered in place in that congregate setting. In terms of the other questions that you asked about the facilities there and how it’s done, that’s a federal facility and so it’s not something that I can control. It’s not something that Dr. Smith can control or the state can control. That’s run by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and so anything would have to be addressed to them on the operations of the facility.

Asa Hutchinson: (34:32)
In terms of the CDC, they came in at our request in evaluation of that, my understanding is that they’ve gone back to Atlanta. And we’ve asked them to come and to take responsibility for that, because it’s a lot of testing resources that will be used in that federal facility if we’re required to do it. And as Dr. Smith says, there ought to be risk-based testing there, which is really who they’ve been in contact with. Let’s test those in the same barrack. And we don’t have to test everybody in the prison, but you take it one step at a time to see who might be exposed to it and do that testing. And so that’s in discussions with the CDC as to whether they will, and the Bureau of prisons will accomplish that objective that we’ve recommended.

Speaker 11: (35:25)
Quick question about [crosstalk 00:35:25] …

Speaker 10: (35:25)
So you’re asking them to come back?

Asa Hutchinson: (35:28)
Yes.

Speaker 11: (35:31)
Question about the summer camp. When you talk about the summer, you’re talking about June, July, August, September?

Dr. Nathaniel Smith: (35:41)
Well, I have particularly in mind with many of the summer camps, they start bringing together the people who are going to work there in early May. And so bringing a bunch of college kids or whoever from different parts of the country together living in the same sort of barracks type of setting as they’re preparing for campers, that itself is a risk.

Speaker 13: (36:03)
So when you say, how long is this directive going to last, at least [crosstalk 00:36:11].

Dr. Nathaniel Smith: (36:11)
Well, I would certainly hope that we’ll eventually be at a point where we can safely do that, but the COVID-19 virus is not exactly on my timetable, but I think I can say with confidence that based on where we are right now, bringing together a bunch of campers, or even counselors, in May doesn’t seem like a good idea at all.

Speaker 14: (36:35)
Would that directive also apply to recreational sports, soccer tournaments, baseball, softball, et cetera?

Dr. Nathaniel Smith: (36:41)
I think we already have a directive that covers that. Thank you.

Speaker 15: (36:44)
Where are we as a state as far as tracing goes? Are we going to be perusing a tracing program or something like that?

Dr. Nathaniel Smith: (36:53)
You’re talking about contact tracing?

Speaker 15: (36:54)
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. Nathaniel Smith: (36:56)
Yes, we continue to do contact tracing, but our main focus is on these congregate settings, these high risk settings, nursing homes, incarcerated populations, others where you have the greatest risk of transmission in the shortest period of time, and that’s just wise use of resources.

Dr. Nathaniel Smith: (37:17)
But we’ve continued to grow our team. Last time I gave numbers as far as the number of people doing contact tracing, I went back and my staff corrected me because we continue to train and expand our capacity, and we’ll continue to do that.

Dr. Nathaniel Smith: (37:37)
I’ve been in conversations with the CDC as well. Their intention is to supplement our efforts as well in various ways, understanding that contact tracing and case followup are just as important on the downside of this curve as they are on the upside.

Speaker 16: (37:56)
Can I just have a followup question over the remote link?

Asa Hutchinson: (37:58)
Yes.

Speaker 16: (38:00)
You mentioned the schools obviously being closed until the end of the school year and talking now about summer camps and keeping people from congregating in those settings, yet daycare centers continue to remain open. So how do you address parents who have kids in K-12, or beyond, that may use summer camp as their summer daycare, yet daycares remain open?

Asa Hutchinson: (38:24)
Now the daycares that you ask about, daycares can remain open. Is that your point?

Speaker 16: (38:35)
Yeah. I guess the question is how do you address parents who have children in K-12 who use summer camps as their daycare? How are they supposed to take care of their children this summer, if these summer camps end up being limited?

Asa Hutchinson: (38:49)
Well, it’s important to note that we have not closed daycares in Arkansas, and so daycares can continue to operate. Obviously they need to do their distancing within there and have their health protocols in place, but they can continue to operate. In fact, we’ve encouraged them because they’re so important for our healthcare workers, our emergency responders, and essential services and on down the line.

Asa Hutchinson: (39:15)
And so it’s probably even a greater hardship in the summer, but we hope that they will be able to stay in place and we hope that things can change quickly. I visited with Dr. Smith about summer camps. I know how important they are. And we have a lot of great summer camps here in Arkansas. That’s really their ministry, or their business. They do that and that’s what their property and their assets are there for. But so I hope that we can have such success that we can end this emergency and we can reopen those camps. But they needed to know in advance that they can’t plan on May 20th, or May 30th, having summer camp, in particularly when they come from out of state, they need some advanced notice on that. And so until the emergency’s over and we’re clear of this, then that’s just something they should not plan on.

Speaker 14: (40:13)
ACLU and Little Rock Family Planning Services sued the state today in terms of the abortions any response to that?

Asa Hutchinson: (40:21)
It’s not unexpected, but in terms of our actions, we took the same action toward this clinic as we would any other clinic that was violating a directive in terms of not engaging in elective surgical procedures. And so we followed the same process. They chose to take it into court. We’ll see what the court says on that.

Speaker 14: (40:49)
What is that line when it comes to abortions, when it becomes elective and a necessity? Where do you guys draw that line at?

Asa Hutchinson: (40:58)
Well, of course the line of distinction was between medication abortions and surgical abortions, and there was a distinction that was made in the directive in that regard.

Speaker 17: (41:11)
Any more details on the advisory board and when you expect to name the members?

Asa Hutchinson: (41:15)
We’ve named them already and Katie will provide that as soon as this is over with. I could actually give you the names but I left that one sheet of paper in my office. We’ll have that for you.

Speaker 14: (41:31)
Is there any case of a second positive test amongst anyone? Have we seen that yet?

Dr. Nathaniel Smith: (41:41)
Not sure I understand the question. A second positive test?

Speaker 14: (41:44)
From one person who has recovered and then potentially tested positive a second time.

Dr. Nathaniel Smith: (41:48)
Well, we have had individuals who have tested positive and then after they’ve recovered from their symptoms, someone has done another test to see if they’ve cleared the virus and they’ve tested positive again. We do recommend that in a hospital setting because of the high risk of transmission if you take someone out of isolation. But for those who are an outpatient, we recommend a non test strategy for determining someone who’s recovered consistent with CDC guidelines.

Dr. Nathaniel Smith: (42:24)
It is possible that someone… These tests, the PCR tests that we use, are very sensitive. They’ll pick up a very small amount of virus. Whether that virus is viable or whether that virus is sufficient to actually transmit to someone, it doesn’t really distinguish very well. So we generally don’t advise someone who’s recovered and who’s feeling well. They’re outside of a hospital setting. They don’t need to get another test, but when they have been tested, sometimes they have found a positive.

Asa Hutchinson: (42:56)
One final question from the table and we’ll see if there’s another one remotely.

Speaker 13: (43:02)
Can we ask [inaudible 00:43:04] about summer camps again? So you’re saying that summer camps might open in June. When I tried to pin you down, you weaved and dodged.

Dr. Nathaniel Smith: (43:16)
Well, I would prefer for us to make those decisions based on the most current information that we have. Sitting here in the middle of April, I don’t have as much information as I will have middle of May, middle of June. It would be nice if we could. From what I’m seeing right now, it seems unlikely, but I’d rather not rule that out until we have more information, more time goes on.

Asa Hutchinson: (43:46)
Is there a one additional question remotely?

Andrew: (43:51)
[crosstalk 00:43:51] Governor, hey, this is Andrew with AP. Wanted to see if you had any reaction to the President’s comments that today, his assertion that he, not the Governors, has the authority to open up the states. Wanted to get your reaction to that. Also see, does that affect your approach in terms of lifting any of the restrictions in Arkansas? Are you seeking their approval or coordinating with them for deciding what to do with reopening things here?

Asa Hutchinson: (44:19)
I think there’s been a good partnership with the federal government. We’ve worked closely. We just had a call with the Vice President today. And I don’t see that there will be an issue there. We all want to move in the same direction in terms of winning this fight and getting back to normal activities.

Asa Hutchinson: (44:39)
But ultimately, the federal government has not declared the scope and I don’t know that they could do that. They’ve relied upon the states to manage this crisis in terms of acquiring PPE with backstop help from the federal government. They’ve allowed us to use our discretion in terms of exactly the protective and safety measures that should be in place, and we’ve utilized that. So that’s just simply a prerogative and the way things should work in terms of the states having the flexibility to manage it. And I expect that to continue.

Asa Hutchinson: (45:22)
And I did hear one other question there and we’ll end with that. Was there another question remotely?

Morgan: (45:27)
Yes. Thank you so much. This is Morgan at KCHB. We were wondering if there’s any instance of an outbreak within an Arkansas hospital?

Asa Hutchinson: (45:39)
We had the Arkansas State Hospital, which is the state owned facility for those that are mentally challenged or under observation. And we had a, I think, it’s about seven that tested positive there, and we’ve been able to manage and work through that and we’re continuing to monitor that.

Asa Hutchinson: (46:06)
With that, thank you for your attention today and we’ll see, hopefully, you tomorrow. Thank you. [crosstalk 00:46:22].

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