Gov. Asa Hutchinson extended his emergency declaration for the coronavirus pandemic on Tuesday as Arkansas' death toll from the virus rose by 66, setting a new one-day high.
Hutchinson also said he was "not satisfied" with the pace of vaccinations in nursing homes, which began last week.
He said pharmacies had received 31,700 doses of the Moderna vaccine, which Arkansas has initially designated for residents and workers in long-term care facilities, but had reported administering only 1,680 doses of the vaccine as of Tuesday morning.
By contrast, providers reported administering 21,137 -- or almost half -- of the 43,875 doses of Pfizer vaccine that the state had received through last week.
The state has initially designated that vaccine for health care workers.
"I expect that pace to pick up considerably in the coming days, but I am not satisfied with the pace of the vaccination, particularly in our long-term care facilities, and I am asking our large retail pharmacies and all of our pharmacies to really understand what's at stake here to help us to get this vaccine administered as quickly as possible because lives are at stake," Hutchinson said of the Moderna vaccinations.
Department of Health spokesman Gavin Lesnick said the Moderna figures Hutchinson cited didn't include an additional 37,100 doses that have been allocated to the state to be administered to long-term care facility residents and staff members by Walgreens and CVS as part of a federal program.
"We will be reporting the doses they administer, but we don't have any in our system yet," Lesnick said.
Providers have three days to report the vaccinations, so the actual number of shots that have been given is higher than the Health Department's tally.
The state's count of cases rose Tuesday by 2,718, dwarfing the 1,941 that were added the previous Tuesday, Dec. 22.
At a record level since Monday, the number of patients hospitalized in the state with covid-19 rose by six, to 1,161.
Those patients included 198 on ventilators, down from 201 a day earlier.
The state death toll from the virus rose to 3,603.
Hutchinson on Dec. 11 extended the emergency that he first declared in March for 20 days while calling on the Legislature to meet as a Committee of the Whole to affirm his declaration.
Legislative leaders declined to call such a meeting, however, saying the matter could be discussed in the regular legislative session that starts Jan. 11.
An executive order Hutchinson signed Tuesday extended the declaration for 60 days, keeping in place measures such as an expansion of telemedicine, an option for children to attend school virtually and Health Department directives designed to prevent the spread of the virus.
"I fully expect the General Assembly to address this issue [during the session] and I would ask them to measure whether we should extend the emergency," Hutchinson said at his weekly news conference on the pandemic.
"I would expect their action on this just as I asked them to affirm the emergency before Dec. 30."
The previous record for a one-day increase in the state toll was the 58 deaths reported on both Dec. 16 and Dec. 21.
Health Secretary Jose Romero said 65 of the deaths reported Tuesday happened within the past month and one happened in November. Twenty-four of the deaths happened within the past week, he said.
"That's telling us that we're really seeing the fallout of Thanksgiving," when gatherings led to a surge in new cases, he said.
