Arkansas' count of coronavirus cases rose Thursday by 1,124 — the third-highest one-day increase since the start of the pandemic.
The state's death toll from the virus, as tracked by the Department of Health, rose by 15, to 1,384.
"I never like the increase in cases," Gov. Asa Hutchinson said in a statement.
But he said he was encouraged by other numbers — a drop in the number of people hospitalized in the state and a decline in active cases at K-12 schools and higher education institutions.
"There were over 12,000 [polymerase chain reaction] and antigen tests yesterday, which is a record for our daily reporting," the Republican governor added. "This high testing volume is vital to our efforts to slow the spread of this virus. Remember, we all have to be disciplined and serious about COVID-19.”
The increase in cases included 921 confirmed through polymerase chain reaction, or PCR tests.
The other 203 were "probable" cases, which include those identified through less-sensitive antigen tests.
The number of people hospitalized in the state with covid-19 fell by five, to 485.
Those patients included 92 who were on ventilators, down from 93 a day earlier.
All 15 deaths that were added to the state's count were of confirmed cases, raising the number of deaths among such cases to 1,238.
The state's cumulative tally of cases rose to 84,821, including 81,531 confirmed cases and 3,290 probable ones.
The number of confirmed or probable cases that were considered to be active rose by 235, to 7,244, as 874 Arkansans were newly classified as having recovered.
Despite the different classifications, the Health Department has said it treats confirmed and probable cases the same for the purposes of its contact-tracing efforts.
That includes requiring people whose results are positive from either type of test to isolate themselves and those they may have been infected to quarantine.
The state's highest one-day increase in confirmed or probable cases was the 1,180 that were added on Sept. 11, followed by an increase of 1,174 on Sept. 4.
