EDITOR'S NOTE: As a service to our readers, The Sentinel-Record publishes updates released each weekday by the city of Hot Springs and the state of Arkansas. As of presstime Wednesday, not all of the daily updates had been released by the Arkansas Department of Health due to technical difficulties.
The following stats were shared Wednesday at Gov. Asa Hutchinson's daily COVID-19 news conference in Little Rock and posted on the Health Department's website:
• 25,246 cumulative cases, up 734 from Tuesday.
• 5,545 active cases, up 59 from Tuesday.
• 19,296 recoveries, up 651 from Tuesday.
• 358 hospitalizations, down 11 from Tuesday.
• 79 cases on a ventilator, down four from Tuesday.
• 305 deaths, up four from Tuesday.
• 859 cumulative nursing home residents infected, up seven from Tuesday.
Wednesday night, the health department reported a second death had occurred in Garland County due to COVID-19. The first COVID-19 death was reported in the county on May 6. Total positive cases for the county were listed as 300, with 71 active positive and 227 recovered.
Tuesday's more than four-week low for new cases in the state was followed by Wednesday's 734 new infections, the second-most reported in a single day.
Wednesday's reported cases trailed only the 878 reported July 2. It was the fourth time in 26 days that reported cases topped 700, raising the rolling seven-day average of new cases 8.42% to 577.14. Wednesday's average was more than 5% off the June 28 peak of 608.14.
Hutchinson listed eight counties with 20 or more new cases. They included Pulaski County, 87, and northwest Arkansas' Washington, 72, and Benton, 60, counties. All three have regularly been among the state's leaders in new cases since the growth of new infections began rising in May, but Wednesday's list included counties that rarely, if ever, register enough new cases to merit mention at the daily briefing.
Pope, 46, Mississippi, 39, Yell, 32, Johnson, 26, and Saline, 21, rounded out the top eight.
"That shows that our testing is very widespread, and we're detecting elements of the virus that we can then go in and isolate," Hutchinson said. "The fact that it's spread out over the state gives us a chance to work our strategy in those counties. It's also an alert to those counties. There's not any place that's immune to the virus. We have to continue to be careful.
"It's an indication the virus is in every county of the state. It's a matter of how you're going to protect yourself from the virus."
Test results reported Wednesday were lower than average for a third day in a row, with 4,567 test reports.
"We still have a depression in the results we're getting because of decreased testing over the Fourth of July weekend," Dr. Nate Smith, Health Department secretary, said.
Hutchinson said contact tracers haven't linked the growth in Pulaski's County's cases to restaurants, bars, personal care services or other business activities on which the state eased restrictions. The growth is a function of "normal community activities," he said.
"We're at a phase of this epidemic where this is not being driven primarily by a specific setting like nursing homes or other facilities or an occupation," Smith said. "This is something that's happening in the community. If someone is infected, they're very likely to bring it home with them.
"It's difficult to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in the home, particularly before you know you're infected."
The Health Department's nursing homes and congregate settings report listed an additional 148 inmates at the Ouachita River Unit of the Arkansas Department of Correction in Malvern with active infections Wednesday, raising the number to 517.
Due to what the Health Department termed technical difficulties, only partial information on Garland County's new infections was available as of presstime Wednesday. The five new cases reported Tuesday dropped the rolling seven-day average to 6.43. It was 9.29 eight days earlier. The county had 74 active cases Tuesday and a 3.5% cumulative infection rate.
Forty-two percent of the 600 people surveyed June 29 and 30 by Gilmore Strategy Group said the pandemic was the most important issue facing the state. The economy, at 18%, was the second most important issue.
Eighty-two percent of respondents said they wear face coverings in public. The use of face coverings increased with the age of respondents, with 91 percent of those 65 and older telling pollsters they wear a mask. Sixty-seven percent of 18-to-24-year-old respondents said they wear masks.
Fifty-four percent of respondents said they opposed the resumption of large events in the fall. Fifty-nine percent said they were likely to send their children to school in the fall.