Hutchinson touts tracing, precautions by Arkansans
The number of Arkansas' coronavirus cases continued to tick upward Thursday as the state added 398 confirmed cases and 150 "probable" cases to its official tallies.
The state's death toll from the virus, as tracked by the state Department of Health, increased by 12, to 940, while the number of patients hospitalized with covid-19 fell by 19, to 392.
Those patients included 79 who were on ventilators, down from 82 a day earlier.
The state's confirmed cases are those that are confirmed through polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, tests. Probable cases include those diagnosed solely through less-sensitive antigen tests.
When both confirmed and probable cases are considered, the total number of cases added to the state's official counts each day has increased steadily since Monday, when the state reported 356 new confirmed or probable cases.
But Gov. Asa Hutchinson said he was encouraged by the state's case numbers of the past few days, including the fewer than 400 confirmed cases that had been added each day for four days in a row.
He credited the state's contact-tracing efforts as well as precautions by Arkansans to avoid catching or spreading the virus.
"My sense is that people are taking it very seriously as we go back to school, that they are following the guidelines to a greater extent," he said.
"This is not where we want to be in a long-term result, but I'd much rather prefer a plateau here than at a much higher level, which we were tinkering with, it seems, a couple weeks ago," he added.
The number of cases added Thursday was the highest since Sunday, when 698 confirmed or probable cases were added to the state's totals.
It was well below the 1,174 cases -- including a record 1,094 that were confirmed -- that were added Sept. 4.
The state's cumulative count of confirmed cases rose Thursday to 66,804, while its count of probable cases increased to 999.
Over a rolling seven-day period, the average number of confirmed or probable cases added to the state's totals fell by 67, to 614.
