200929_COVID-19 Press Briefing

8:15PM Sep 29, 2020

Speakers:

Andy Davis - ADG

Governor Asa Hutchinson

Dr. Jose Romero

Secretary Johnny Key (ADE)

Andrew DeMillo - AP

Neal Gladner

Alex Burch - KATV

Dr. Mike Cima

Mike McNeil - MagnoliaReporter.com

Melissa Zygowicz - THV11

Jay Bir - KARK 4/Fox 16

Leslie Peacock - Ark Times

Josh White - KAIT

Crystal Martinez - KNWA

Veronica Ortega - 5 News

Keywords:

cases

schools

districts

arkansas

testing

report

teachers

numbers

positivity

terms

test

continue

county

state

question

antigen test

students

area

week

school district

Hello, Eddie, good afternoon.

First, welcome to today's weekly COVID. Update, I'm pleased to be wearing a Project Zero mask today a great organization that helps foster parents and adoption. And we really appreciate Project Zero. First, thank you to Secretary Romero and Secretary key for joining me today. And I first want to recognize the life, the contributions, and the service of Superintendent Jody Jenkins of Atkins, who passed away early this morning from COVID related complications. I know that he was highly respected throughout the river valley, for his devotion to his family, for his love of sports and love of education. And he will be missed. And I wanted to recognize his life and service that he gave. I said that today that I would mention, and discuss briefly the White House Task Force, and their report that they issue once a week for the states. And I will mention that and the good news from that report is that while we are still in the red zone for cases, and I want to recognize that as a continued challenge for us, they do have as the yellow zone for test positivity, which I'll discuss more at length. But it also said in the second paragraph of the summary of the report that Arkansas has seen stability in new cases, and stability and test positivity over the last week. And so it is important to recognize what they see in terms of national experts on trend lines, they see some stability. And so people who like to know that the discipline that they're exercising makes a difference. I think this demonstrates that it can make a difference. And we are careful about our behavior. It goes on and talks about the the cases, though, and that's too high. It's above the national average. And we will speak to that also during the course today. I also wanted to mention that the White House has continued to support Arkansas and the other governors in terms of testing capacity. And as you can see from the number of tests that we're doing, that we are receiving the supplies were receiving the support to a greater extent from our commercial labs. And then yesterday, of course, the White House announced that they had purchased 100 and 50 million Abbott lab bionics now, which our rapid point of care tests that are simple, they're within 15 minutes, you will have a result they are going to distribute and allocate to Arkansas 900,000 of those tests, and we will have 59,000 of them 59,000 that will be shipped within the next 10 days is what we're advised. And so over the next 10 days, Dr. Romero and I and the health department team will be developing the plan to utilize this allocation of rapid response test that will be really beneficial to us in terms of our schools in terms of our prisons, in terms of nursing homes. But we hope that we'll have sufficient quantity even to go beyond that. And so we're continuing to increase our testing capacity. And we're grateful for this support from the White House.

And then if I might talk about the schools for just a second, I believe this is our first slide, I asked them to take a look at the active cases that we have in our K through 12. As well as in our higher education and see, you know how we are today compared with where we were a week ago. And and so you can see here that the week beginning September 21, we had 740 active cases, and that's the most relevant statistic. Active cases in K through 12 public schools and then in the week that was reduced to 770 So we're down from where we were a week ago. And at the cases, the college and universities are even more dramatic than that we had 701 cases a week ago, that's down to 490. And so actions make a difference. And the clear steps that have been made at the college level, particularly have reduced active cases, students have responded with more discipline with understanding what's at risk, and wanted to recognize that progress, K through 12. That's progress. So we hope that we can continue to make that but very proud of our educators, and what they're doing in terms of having a environment that we can have our education progress through the course of the year in the safe environment. And then we'll go on to our cases that I will cover just leave that chart there for a second. And over the last 24 hours, we have had an additional 482 cases in Arkansas of COVID. That brings our total over the 80,000 mark to 80,003. We have six fewer hospitalizations, so brings our hospitalized down to 490, which I'm glad to see because I just remember that high watermark of 520. And I want to stay under that. Obviously, I'm encouraged, we check around the hospitals, there is that capacity. But I was glad to see that number go down today, regretfully. And it's we have an additional 21 Arkansans that have died. That brings our total to 1204 a constant reminder of the seriousness of this virus, and how it can hit people who are who may be vulnerable. But even the healthy can be hit with it. And we have to treat it seriously because it's caused over 1200 deaths here in Arkansas. And so you can see it on the trend line there. And the next will be the rolling average. And this is what is most reflective of the trend line. And while we're not skyrocketing, and we're a little bit flat, as the White House said a leveling off of cases, we've got more work to do that is when I say the bright spot is our positivity rate. Our challenge is the number of cases, because the higher number of cases we have, obviously will lead to more hospitalizations, and a percent of those will die down the road. And so that's what makes me concerned when we see a high number of cases any particular day. Obviously, we're glad with a fewer number of cases today. And then the number of active cases is down last couple of days. And that is encouraging

hospitalization. Again, as I indicated, it's not at the peak. But we got to watch that. And then this is one I asked for. And I mentioned before our winter strategy, and part of our winter strategy was to reach 1 million PCR test in Arkansas since we began. And you remember those dark days, whenever we had limited testing capacity, we had to build our testing capacity. And how that is accelerated to now we have tested over 1 million. We can't say 1 million are Kansans. But we have tested our Kansans 1 million times over the course of this pandemic. So we have reached that goal. And we're going to continue to test to make sure that we can test 6% of our population every month. And then we'll also see just for this month, in terms of antigen test, we've done over 21,000 so we've actually doubled our goal there in antigen tests we continue to see that increased I think we'll see that used in the future. The seven day rolling average of positivity, this is the good news story that now we at least are tipping right around the 6% in the seven day rolling average. So the positivity right is going down. This is we want to look at this and this is by public health. Excuse me, this is by age group. And this is instructive because as we've shown this from time to time in the past you We've seen that most recently, the largest growth area has been 18 to 24, zero to 17, particularly 18 to 24. But this is the growth rate from September 20, to September 26, by age group. And we've seen an increase in cases in the 65 plus. And so that's a little different than what we've seen in previous weeks. And then the next one, breaks it down by public health regions. And this is the same growth rate September 20, through September 26. And you can see that the highest growth rate in that period of time by percentage is 9.4%. of the Northeast, followed by the southeast at 7.1%, central 6.9, Northwest in terms of growth rate is at five and southwest at 5.2. This is percentage and so the numbers, the actual numbers is higher course of the Northwest than in some of the other districts. And this is the one we'd like to show we'll start doing this once a week now. But this is a trend line for each of the public health regions. And it just reminds us that we have challenges, we have to continue to work hard. And so the top one is the orange is in the northwest, that is the most active in terms of new cases. And then followed by the yellow, which is the Central Arkansas area followed by the blue the Northeast, the red in the southeast, and the green in the southwest. And, and so if you're in those regions, you can go look on the public health map, you can see what the breakdown is by county. But this shows the region of the state and the number of new cases by rolling average in those different regions. And with that, I did want to point out that we had addition, we had our PCR testing a 5394. Over the last 24 hours, we've had antigen test of 1167 with 217 of those that are positive. And as I said both of those continue to remain strong. With that. Let me ask Secretary Romero to come. That'll give some more detail and then I'll ask a secretary key to come to the microphone to elaborate a little bit more on where we are in the educational system.

Thank you, Governor. So a little more detail of the 492 new cases 476 were in the community 606 cases were correctional cases. We have added 756 persons to a roll of recovered individuals for the state. We are now at 72,265. Our Kansans recovered from COVID. With regard to the deaths, as the governor reported, there are 21 new deaths to be added to the rolls. These are all not these are not delayed death reports. Nine of these cases occurred in nursing home residents again indicating the fragility and the risk factors involved in being in the older age group. And these cases showed no clustering in terms of nursing home institution, correctional institution or in county. With regard to the counties that are positive, we only have four that are 20 or above 65 cases were reported in Washington County, followed by Pulaski at 47. Sebastian at 33 and Benton at 31. We have a total of 706 new cases adding PCR confirmed cases and probable cases. So with that, then I'll turn the podium over but before I I wish I wish to do that, as I was walking out the door to attend this press conference. My administrator stopped me and wish to communicate that a citizen had called the office literally minutes before I left and she wanted me to ask everybody the public retailers, everybody in the state of Arkansas to remind them that the use of the mask while we are using them. What this individual noticed was that they were a lot of persons were using the mask directly, and we're wearing the mask below the nose, which we all know, doesn't really serve a benefit. So she asked that I please pass this on again today at today's press conference, I want to again reiterate that it's important to wear the mask correctly, to have it covering the nose, covering the mouth. That's the way you prevent spread of the virus. So thank you very much.

So as of about 12 o'clock today, we are reporting 36 schools that are currently under some modification of their operations. 93 have inactive modifications, which means that they have made modifications and now have returned to regular on site instruction. Last week, we saw 26 of these modifications that took place that was a an increase over the previous weeks, and visited with Dr. Romero about this. And we theorize that that is a reflection of the Labor Day weekend, and the activities and things that were going on that Labor Day weekend, we hope to see that decline. We also know that districts continue to work with their teachers and their with their ready for learning plan. There, we continue to get feedback from teachers that the balance between the virtual and the on site needs to be looked at, we are working with districts to to make those modifications within their plans, working with they're ready for learning committees, to to make those adjustments, so as to relieve some of that stress that's currently on the teachers now and continue to to provide that support. The The other thing I want to say too, is as we've been asked about the changes and cancellations of football games, I would just want to remind that that is exactly what we've asked them to do when we set forth before the school year began looking at the the response levels, and some of the activities that needed to be curtailed depending on the data locally. Those are the things that we would have expected them to do. We believe they're doing it very well. They are looking at each week, what they need to do and the changes they need to make. So I would just say that, as an overall assessment, our school districts are continuing to do a good job in coping and dealing with this current pandemic.

Thank you, Johnny. And put up one more slide if you might. Yes, this is one. I want to draw attention to this. I asked them to look at the county positivity right we show this from time to time, and this is the last week's numbers. And then this is the this week's positivity number. Over the it's a rolling average, 14 day percent positivity. And so plasti County, for example, last time was 5.3%. And now it is 4.8% positivity. Right. So while Placer County has had usually the top county in terms of the actual number of new cases, their positivity rate, they've continued to make progress. So that now it is the 14 day rolling average is actually below 5%. So I wanted to applaud Placer County, I think you've made progress, you can also see Benton County was 8.3%. Now it's down to 7.9% going in the right direction, the red areas, sometimes you don't have the same volume of numbers. But those are the ones of course that have a higher positivity rate that we want to be able to get that down. And it serves as a reminder that there is community spread in some of those red areas across the state. With that we'll be happy to take any questions.

In the White House report as wondering, they had some recommendations on testing like increase the testing in northeast and southwest Arkansas and getting more like routine hat day in college. And just wondering what you thought about their recommendation.

We take all the recommendations seriously we try to evaluate them to see whether we're doing enough. Obviously you can see from our testing our testing is very robust all across the state. But you know as we see areas have concern we will try to increase the testing there. Some of that's dependent upon demand. But the demand seems to be significant enough. That gives us a good understanding of the depth of the virus in that particular community and allows us to do our contact tracing. So we will continue to target the testing and those areas that are needed.

Remember the past week in terms of just the amount of positive occasions that started to come up? Is there any explanation as to where, or maybe just the reason behind why we're seeing such a such a spike in just those numbers right now,

it's a combination of the spread being around Arkansas, and that we're doing a significant amount of testing everywhere, and people actually are going in and getting tests. And so that's, I think, reflective of the cases that we see. But it's it's settling in, even though it is flat, it is at too high of a level. And we would like to see that go down. I'm hopeful and history says and Dr. Merrill might want to comment on this. But as you see the positivity rate go down, and you're doing sufficient testing, eventually, those cases will go down. So that's our hope, that that when the positivity rate goes down, you should be seeing at some point in time, the case go down as well, but Romero

Thank you, Governor. So we do want to see the positivity rate in the state go down that indicates that less and less individuals are becoming infected. Therefore, there's less and less of a chance of transmitting, everything should go down from there, hospitalizations should go down and death should go down. So we're making slow but proper progress forward in decreasing the total positivity rate in the state, we're following the positivity rate each week, and it has been decreasing. So we're achieving that goal. But it will take time to reach a definite low point.

Status offering K through 12 schools rapid response testing through the Department of Health, are there any of these K through 12 schools that have declined using this assistance? And if so, why?

The testing that we're making available for K through 12 is through our public health units, our county health offices that they have the antigen test, that is quick response, and that has a priority, our educational institutions, and so if a teacher of students needs that rapid test, they have the priority as they go there. In terms of we're not I'm not aware of any resistance to that. But let me ask, do you have a comment on it, or tomorrow.

So we have, from the very beginning, had the ability to perform rapid antigen testing at the health department and backing that up with four negatives with rapid PCR being done within 24 hours. In addition to that, we have the way it was described originally as strike teams, there are limited these teams that can go out specifically to schools as necessary, if there is an outbreak, so we can offer directly testing in an area near the school, a parking lot, etc. So there are multiple ways of testing rapidly at these sites.

I have

not heard of any cases, as of yet.

Secretary Key I just saw him nod and affirm that he's not aware of any school that have declined that assistance. Leslie, did you have a question?

I'm sorry. I'm the as you know, are aware the Little Rock teachers have wanted to, or the teachers union has wanted to teach virtually. So what if we don't want them to teach virtually because we don't think that that's the best kind of situation for the children. Then why are we explain expanding the Virtual Academy.

So virtual is an option in education. And so they're in the Little Rock School District, a very high percent of students actually chose virtual and we have supported the virtual education through our Little Rock School District. But we've also offered in classroom instruction, and that's an important part of the equation as well. And if you had teachers that said, that's all we want to do is virtual Then you're eliminating that option for parents and students that really need that in classroom instruction and chose to have that option. So we're given parents a choice, and we want to make sure that choice is available, and it takes teachers assistance in order to accomplish that choice. Do you have anything?

I think it needs to be very clear that the union's demands for 100% virtual, as the governor said, leaves students out. We said from outset, last April, that our expectation is schools would be on site, providing virtual options, the options are at the discretion of the parents in the district has been very flexible in working with parents to make those options available. They've also worked with the teachers to accommodate certain situations that were, you know, they could make sure teachers needs are met. So I think the the issue though, becomes when you're setting demands that are unreasonable to to say, we're only going to teach virtually, until these things happen. That leaves parents out, that leaves students out, and it doesn't meet their needs. And we need to continue to do that to have a successful school year.

...Right district yesterday,personnel from the Department of Education.

So on Sunday evening, the when we were made aware of the situation, we I think, had about a dozen of our team at the department of education that we identified, that could be deployed. We they were on site Monday morning. And within a short period of time, the district determined that their district staff were able to cover the classrooms, make sure that safe conditions were available for the children. And then they released the department staff to go back to the department.

I know a lot of the numbers are due by tomorrow, but is there anything anecdotally that we're hearing in district seeing shifts, one way or another whether it be to parents who were in class now wanting to go virtual, and vice versa?

We are but it's not one way or the other. It's both ways we see parents who are requesting to come back on site when they had originally wanted to be virtual. And we're seeing now students who are on site that are finding it necessary to move virtual, we expected that to be fluid J. And it's going to vary from district to district, and really is a nature of the changing conditions and communities in the schools. And in those family situations. So that that's not surprised that wasn't surprising to us to see that.

Let me come back and make a point on the Little Rock School District. And I think the teachers have really done an extraordinary job. And I applaud them for really resisting the pressure of the Union. Not to be in class yesterday. And one of the criteria of the Union was that we don't want to be in the classroom until the positivity is less than 5%. But they also said that they have fewer, we have fewer than five new cases a day across the state of Arkansas. And it is setting an impossible bar. And and so it's like saying we're going to refuse to do what is necessary for in classroom instruction, even though they and they set the bar too high. Is there any questions that we have remotely?

Yes, Governor, good afternoon. If you're glad you're in hot springs. You mentioned the testing numbers are up, the positivity rates are starting down and you're hopeful that will mean fewer cases. Are you seeing any correlation yet in the projections from ua ms that bear that out?

You know, their short term projections are just simply taking our cases and looking at over the next week and saying this is what you project our cumulative hospitalizations are going to be in the short term is fairly easy. Whenever you look at the long term. It's you know unpredictable at the best It is not that helpful in terms of developing policy. And it you know if you want to look at success Go back and look at the projections from June or when they started making those projections, because we have beat those significantly. But the most recent projections, they change, there'll be another one that comes out today. And so, you know, I think the, what it serves is it tells people this is serious. And if we don't behave right, then you're gonna have a really, really dark winter. And so it's a good helpful reminder. It also is encouraging whenever you see that we've accomplished our original objectives, which is to flatten the curve, make sure that we have adequate hospital space, and I think it demonstrates that we are doing that.

Governor Mike McNeil at MagnoliaReporter.com. Yesterday's Arkansas health department report for COVID cases in schools indicated that Magnolia had 19 active cases, while last night the Magnolia school district said there are actually 42 active cases. I'm wondering if there's any way to speed up the statewide recording of COVID in schools so that parents can have a more accurate picture of what's happening in real time.

Let me call our our...Dr. Cima here for the information safe?

Yes, thank you. I think you're referring to the school report that we publish every Monday and Thursday on our website. Magnolia school district did have 19 active cases, according to our data, I will say that we have various points of contact in every single school district that are reporting to us on a near real time basis, we'll investigate to see if there are any delays specifically within that school district.

Someone asked, I think at one point in the past about the New York Times story that talked about the number of cases that we had cumulative in our K through 12. And then if it rate is if you read the story, you realize that we are getting more data and putting it out in a public fashion than most other states are. We think it's important for our parents and our students and the community to understand we're trying to be transparent about it. And you know, it's not a perfect system. But we're getting that information out. And then the districts are even adding to that by putting up the data on their local schools as well. Any other question?

governor? Why didn't he it? Um, I was asking what's on the line for the state and the Department of Education on these October one numbers with this carryover funds from the cares act? What What does everybody why are all these schools trying to hit certain numbers? What's on the line for this state in this education system?

I'll ask Secretary Key to ask answer that.

So the October one day is important, because that is the day that we solidify the enrollment numbers for the the for that school year. And you know, there I don't know that there's any cares act. I'm not aware of any cares act connection to that or really any direct federal funding impact on that. But it is a important deadline, and we are working with districts to understand where they are seeing the declines in their enrollment. Right now, we are seeing the biggest impact with kindergarten, the expected numbers of kindergarteners based on the previous years is not where normally would be. We have seen a year over year increase in the number of homeschool notices of intent. But that October one deadline is important for schools just to solidify those initial enrollment numbers. In it the funding connection is the funding for next year. It's the funding for in this case, the 2122 school year. That's also a very important time so that we can identify the free and reduced lunch numbers. That's another challenge districts are having in that. And that also affects state funding, as well as just the number of students that they can build a USDA for for reimbursement for meals. So that's not new to COVID. That's a normal very important day in the school business.

Next question.

And Governor This is Andrew with AP wanted to go back to Superintendent Jenkins death. Want to ask you how, how concerned are you about about this and about, you know, the potential for there being more hospitalizations, more and more deaths of education. Administrators kind of the situation the schools with this is, you know, is this a sign of what's what's to come? And also want to ask you about the White House taskforce report, the second week in a row where they've said that more than a quarter of the counties have high, high community transmission and want to see if you have how concerned you are about that. And yeah, what does there need to be more targeted efforts, in those in those counties with with the high transmission

In terms of the schools, the constant lesson is whether you're at church, whether you're at school, whether you're in the grocery store, that it's possible to get COVID if you're not careful, and, and we want to make schools as safe environment as possible for the students, for the teachers. And we want to work on that every day. It's necessary. And there's dedicated staff and teachers, but we want to do everything we can to keep everyone safe in that environment. In in terms of the White House report, you pointed out that it said 25% of the counties in Arkansas have community spread, a high level of it had 75% of the county's had moderate community spread. Well, that's consistent with what we've been saying and Dr. delahaye, that the number of cases we have indicate that we've got committee spread in Arkansas. So it is just a reminder that if you go out, wherever in Arkansas, then you know, unless you're social distancing, you're in jeopardy of attracting the virus. And so be careful. And if we are careful individually, then we're not going to contract it, and we're not going to be able to spread it. And, you know, if you really look at the multiplier impact effect, where you know, you have 700 cases a day, that leads to 1000 cases a day that leads to 1100 leads a 1200 and keeps going up because it exponentially spreads. It hasn't happened, you know, we have gone up where it is, you know it was steady. It got up to 1000. But it didn't keep going up. And now we'll see where it goes in the future. But it does make a difference on your behavior. And I think that's the lesson from the White House report. And it's also a lesson from history that that's what we've seen in the recent days. Another question remotely. I heard another question.

Yes. Yeah.

Up on the question that was asked earlier about school numbers. We've noticed here in the Northwest Arkansas area, a similar trend. For example, yesterday that and building Rogers ADH report reported 13 active cases, though in the Bentonville school district website, it showed five and Roger show 23 I know you all said it's being looked into, it's not a perfect system. But is there any other specific reasons on what's causing these discrepancies? Is it from the schools and and which report should the public consider to be most accurate?

And I'm gonna let our expert come up here as well. But, you know, the fact is that we report the cases district wide as we receive that information, and that the districts will, you know, may put the information out based upon the the school itself. So there might be a lag, but there should be some consistency in terms of the overall numbers and the trend lines.

Yes, thank you. Just to reiterate, we do put this report out every Monday and Thursday. I'm not sure how frequently the school districts are updating their numbers, or what definitions they're using for active cases. I would have to investigate further to see that the how they line up in terms of the definitions of active cases, and of course the time and to see how we we match up with our school districts.

Is there a question remotely that has not been asked or that an individual is not asked a question yet?

printer? Yeah, that should be rapid Coronavirus testing distributed by the federal government. Will that be enough to meet the needs of the community and will a certain area of the states or group or population get priority for those tests?

Well, of course we have the rapid test the antigen test right now this distributed in our county. health units as well as other places in Arkansas. And so we're going to have an infusion of new testing the appid. testing equipment that will come in, it's going to enhance our ability to put it in different places. Your question is, will it be enough? I think the answer is yes. You combine that quick testing capability with our PCR testing, our commercial labs, our Department of Health, we have built the infrastructure and now we're adding to that the capability of that quick test. So, you know, we're going to have to prioritize it initially. And it will be and, you know, whether it's schools, which will be a top priority, it could be prisons, as Dr. Romero has said, we might need to do that. But we're going to be working on the specifics of that plan in the coming week. So when we get the task, we will deploy it to the areas that are needed, and the quick response that is needed. Next question.

This is Melissa Zygowicz With channel 11, sort of bouncing off Andrews question, what is your message to teachers and educators that may be scared or worried upon hearing about the Akon, superintendents death? You know, you mentioned that people need to not let their guard down. But we're hearing reports of situations where some teachers, it's difficult for them to social distance, and a lot of times kids don't always keep their mask on all day. So what is your message to those teachers?

Well, you know, that they need to make sure that they take the protective measures that they, they if they see a challenge there that they talk to their school superintendent, and that, you know, those guidelines are followed. You know, it's not just about what happens at the school, but it's also about what happens in the community and where they go after school, both where the students do, but also the staff. And so it's, it's really hard to know exactly origins. But the environment that we have in the school right now is probably as safe as you can have in any public environment in Arkansas, because the measures that have been taken, we just want to make sure we don't let those down. And if teachers nervous, we hope that and we understand that, first of all, anybody who goes out in the public and has to deal with people, there's a natural concern, whether you're a teacher, or whether you are in the public life in different ways. So you just have to take those necessary precautions. federic key Did you have anything you want to add to that?

Yeah, Melissa, I think, you know, anytime something like this happens in the especially in the middle of the school year, it can jar community. But it also helps us all reflect. And I know that I've talked to superintendents today, and they are reflecting and looking at, again to redouble their efforts to make sure that safety precautions are in place as much as as possible. And you know that that is part of obviously a fatality is never something that we look for. But when they do happen, what does that help us do internally, individually and with our teams? And those are conversations that I expect are going to be happening the rest of this week, and then the next week, superintendents, principals and teachers in districts around the state. Talk about are we doing everything we can? And I expect that there will be again a redoubling of efforts to make sure that the risk mitigation is as strong as possible.

Jay, I know again, the numbers aren't due till tomorrow, but I know there was an issue across the state about just kids kind of being miaa. Have we seen a lot of some of that starting to get cleaned up? Whether it be you know, their reporting? Or you know, they're going on full homeschool off now?

No, that's a great question. So you know, we get into the system and we look every day we see evidence that districts are making corrections, correcting their own numbers or adjustments to their numbers, but next week, we will be ready to roll out a broader approach to how we want to help after we get those October one numbers in to go out and identify where these in my children are.

Jay, you're sort of making up for lost time, aren't ya?

Oh Guess has there been anything looked at in terms of, you know where we're at in terms of policy of? Are we going to change things over in certain sections? Are we going to loosen? Ah, nothing? I don't know what else there is to loosen up Really? But But is there anything that you guys have looked at here in the past couple of weeks that maybe needs to change? Or are we still just gonna operate is kind of where we're currently at? For the time?

Well, we don't take anything for granted. We don't have anything that is not something that we shouldn't look at again. And so as we see challenges we look at what can we do, what more is there out there to do we learn from other states, we try to increase our testing, make sure our contact tracing is working, and, and have all the reminders that we can from a public messaging standpoint, I just traveled to Georgia. And so I got to see a couple other states and what's happening there went into restaurants and guess what, everybody's wearing a mask two thirds capacity. And, and people are living, whether it's in Arkansas, or other places under these constraints. And I don't believe whenever we're having, you know, 800 cases or down today, but a large number of cases that you opt to go to full capacity. I don't believe it's the right time to live restrictions further. But we're anxious to do it. We just got to get where everybody is healthy and we don't have as many people dying. Thank you all very much.