Good afternoon, everyone, thank you for joining me for today's weekly COVID update. I'm pleased to be joined by Dr. Jose Romero, Secretary of the Department of Health, also a Dr. Jerrilyn Jones from the Department of Health, Rachel Bunch from the Arkansas Health Care Association. And then Secretary Johnny Key of the Department of Education. We're going to cover a number of items today, principally focused on vaccines and hospital hospitalizations. But I first want to announce that today, after consultation with Secretary Romero, I am extending the public health emergency for an additional 60 days. As everyone will recall, this was set to expire, I believe it was December 30. And so we are extending that for an additional 60 days. Secondly, let me go to the case report. I just want to give the summary first and I'll come back and talk about some other items. And here you can see, first of all, there's not any good news at all in this report today. The total cases, including the confirmed and probable cases is 2718. new cases today, over the last 24 hours. We have of those additional confirmed cases there's 1449. And the probable cases based upon antigen test is 1269. We very sadly have a number of 66 additional deaths as a result of COVID 19, which I believe is the highest number that we've had in a 24 hour period. In terms of hospitalizations, we've had a modest increase but any increase in hospitalizations is impacts our hospital capacity. We have six additional hospitalized and then our ventilators is an additional is less is three less on ventilators. You can see the top counties Pulaski County with 424 new cases in Pulaski County. The rest of them are fairly traditional ones Benton County, Garland County, Washington, Faulkner and White counties. It is noteworthy that only 40 of the new cases are correctional and I know they're working very hard to make sure that they protect our inmates that are incarcerated. And with that, with those statistics that I've just given to you, I wanted to report on our vaccines because that is the hope that we all have that our vaccine is going to be out there it's going to turn the tide on this and we're anxious to have the vaccine not only received in Arkansas but actually administered so that it is in those that are in need or in the right priority. We have thus far received as of this morning 31,700 Maoderna dosages, and we've have received our Pfizer, Pfizer dosages as well. And of the Pfizer that is allocated principally to our health care workers. 48.2% of our Pfizer vaccine has been administered. And our hospitals have worked very hard to get the vaccines even through the holidays. administered, our health care workers are responding very well is picked up the morale the step of those working in that environment. But it's not just the hospitals is the MMS workers as well, and those others that would be qualified as health care workers to receive that vaccine. So we're moving quickly. In terms of the vaccine for our health care workers. The Maoderna vaccine has been allocated principally and first of all to our long term care facilities that is administered by our pharmacies, and of the 31,700 Moderna dosages that have been received in Arkansas, only 1680 have been administered as of this morning. Now I expect that pace to pick up because 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. And I know there's been unique challenges. But we have a job to do. We have to get this vaccine as it's received, administered, because this is what will turn the tide. And we're right now in the category of 1-A priority, which is our health care workers and our long term care facility staff, and, and, and those that are housed there. And so with that, I want to thank Rachel Bunch for her leadership with the Arkansas Health Care Association, who is on the front line of coordinating with our long term care facilities and this vaccination program with our pharmacies. And so Rachel, I wanted to ask you to make comments in regard to what we can expect in the coming weeks.
Thank you, Governor. As the governor mentioned, Moderna vaccines started arriving last week at our pharmacies, we definitely see vaccines as a light at the end of the tunnel, and an opportunity to return to some semblance of normal and long term care. We've got a lot of people that are very excited about getting the vaccines. However, this is a process. There are a lot of logistics to work out. We're working to increase the speed of delivery to vaccines in our long term care facilities. This involves a lengthy consent process with both patients, their guardians and our employees. And there are over 300 of these locations that will have to have on site vaccines. I know that there are some clinics going on right now in the state. I've talked to several pharmacies and administrators today, I would especially like to thank our Arkansas based pharmacies that have really stepped up and started offering vaccines very quickly in our facilities, to our elders, and to our staff. They've been working late hours and they've got teams working overnight to do data entry, and get things ready, they've really stepped up and we so appreciate them. We are doing what we can to get this done faster. And we definitely appreciate the prioritization of our elderly patients and their caregivers who provide around the clock care for them. My understanding is that by the middle of January, January 16, is the date that I was given from our federal partners that every facility would have been offered a clinic by that date. So we'll continue to work with the Governor and the health department as we're able to offer more of these at the facilities.
Thank you, Rachel. And I know how hard you've been working and your team in accomplishing this vaccination program and very grateful to you. And for all of those that have worked, whether it's the hospitals or whether it's the pharmacies, they're really tasked with a tremendous logistics challenge. And I'm grateful for their hard work and getting it done. In terms of hospitalizations. I want to make an observation that, you know, we went through Thanksgiving and what we've seen right now is the surging cases from Thanksgiving. And I know that the vast majority of our Kansans really took extra steps to be careful over Thanksgiving. And yet even with that, we see an increase since Thanksgiving, a one-third increase in the daily new cases, a one-third increase since Thanksgiving in daily new cases. If you look at hospitalizations, that has increased by 10% since Thanksgiving, one-third increase in new cases led to a 10% increase in hospitalizations. Now, we've that's Thanksgiving and now we come into Christmas. And again, I know so many Arkansans really made the effort to have small gatherings, to follow all the guidelines, and I want to applaud everybody that took the extra measure during this time of the year to be careful. But even with that we know the millions of people that have traveled, we know that there is movement and increased movement. And the question is is whether vote movement was accomplished by following the guidelines without those but all of the national experts, Dr. Romero is concerned about a continued increase in cases following Christmas and leading into New Years. This is a challenging time for Arkansas because of this. And While everybody is trying, we have to recognize that these increase in cases will eventually lead to an increase in hospitalizations. Even though because of management, better therapeutics, we are trying to keep that hospitalization level at at a area that we can accommodate everybody's needs. But one of the, let me just give you some statistics on our available beds right now. Currently, as of this morning, on ICU beds, we had 5% of available beds. 5% of ICU beds are available. When it comes to total bed capacity, 21% are available across the state. When it comes to ventilators, we have 60% ventilator capacity. Now, that sounds like there's some margin there and there is some margin. But when you break it down by different geographic regions of the state, then that's where it gets into problems, because you might have an available bed in South Arkansas, but the need is in North Arkansas. And so that's why we created COVIDComm to help coordinate on a statewide basis, the allocation of these scarce resources. Dr. Jones is led that effort and I want her to give her perspective on where we are and our hospitalizations in Arkansas.
Thank you, Governor. So like the governor said, our ICU bed situation is somewhat tight. I will say however, that hospitals are managing right now. But I would like to applaud the efforts of COVIDComm. So since this was initiated less than two weeks ago, they've opened 207 cases for 122 patients and have been able to facilitate the transfer from beginning to end of 64 of those patients. Now those numbers might not add up so much. So let me break it down a little bit. So the cases are that represent the number of calls that are being made to outside facilities in order to try to get a patient transferred. And this was for 122 patients. And like I said they were able to facilitate from soup to nuts, about 50% of those. And the reason is because we're running into a bit of difficulty in finding places for those patients to go to like the governor said there might be a bed in South Arkansas where the need is in North East Arkansas. But that bed might be allocated for something else, say a postdoc patient or for a patient that is presently in the emergency department, which means it's not available for a transfer from an outside facility. So unfortunately, some of these patients have been on waiting list and sometimes hospitals themselves have had to find places for them in different states. Now, by the same token, we in Arkansas do take care of individuals from other states as well, you can talk to our facilities up in Arkansas Valley, like in Mercy Fort Smith and things like that, who are routinely caring for patients and also in the north, northeast northwest corner routinely caring for patients that are from out of state. And that is just how the system has worked with respect to EMTALA and trauma and all of those things. So these tend to be feeder hospitals for other patients. So the problem is that this is a global pandemic, and it is affecting the earth. It is also affecting our states, it's affecting neighboring states. And so what we need to do is to make sure we're doing all of those things to adhere to the public health guidelines and to avoid getting the disease because that's going to be the best way to avoid being hospitalized from the disease and needing to be transferred for another to another facility. Thank you.
Thank you, Dr. Jones, and now Dr. Romero, for your comments.
So I think much of what I was going to say has been said by the governor and by Dr. Jones. But let me just stress that we are seeing increased numbers of cases. And I expect unfortunately to see further increase in cases in the next couple of weeks. We are entering into a holiday that is quite festive. We spend a lot of time in congregating with people, I am asking you to all reconsider the idea of getting together in a large group. I think that if you're going to have this type of a reunion, it should be a nuclear family reunion that is individuals that live in your household and avoiding bringing other individuals into your home. I personally my family will not be celebrating outside of the home this year. We feel that it is extremely important that we set the example for everyone to look at this is something that can have profound repercussions. We are already on a curve. And if we add more cases to that we are in danger of overwhelming our hospital system, even though we have in place a very, very robust way of finding beds. I cannot stress that this is this period of time in the next two weeks is critical. I am very concerned about where we could be going. So I'll stop there, urge you all to maintain the three W's, that is where your mask, wash your hands, and maintain your distance socially. Avoid loud large crowds and have a prosperous and Happy New Year in your homes. Thank you.
Thank you, Dr. Romero. And in terms of the good news side, we are pleased with congressional action with the COVID relief package that has been signed by the President. We're still trying to tabulate the impact on Arkansas in the areas that we can benefit obviously, the individual assistance to those that are unemployed, the stimulus checks will be very beneficial to the families in need. But in addition, we'll be receiving money that will help in our vaccine administration and distribution here in this state. In the area of education, I'm pleased to announce that it looks like we will receive approximately $800 million that will benefit educational programs in Arkansas. Secretary Key has been trying to dig into this and will have give a better idea as to the areas that this might impact. Johnny.
Thank you, Governor. We are pleased with the package that has passed Congress and signed by the President. And as the governor said approximately $800 million is what it appears will be coming to Arkansas for K 12 as well as higher education. These funds will follow the framework that had been established under the previous CARES Act. The GEER funds the governor's educational emergency relief funds will total about 36 point 4 million additional dollars. The higher education emergency relief funds, we refer to those as the HEER funds $205 million. Those will primarily go directly to the institutions of higher education. And then for K 12, the ESSER or the elementary and secondary school education relief funds be about $558 million. The as I said the framework is going to be close to what it had been previously, Congress did add some additional language that I think will be of interest for K 12. And that's in the area of school facilities. They added language in this legislation to allow some of these $558 million to be used for school facilities and repairs that would help reduce the risk of the virus transmission, as well as to improve environmental health hazards and improve indoor air quality. We look forward to getting more information from the US Department of Education in the coming weeks and get more details out to you as soon as we know them.
Thank you, Johnny. And with that, let me go quickly through some additional graphs that show trend lines, the seven day rolling average of confirmed and probable cases in Arkansas, you can see the dip but that as a result of Christmas, so I don't put much confidence in the dip. But the hospitalized, you can see the slight uptick. We held it flat for some time. But we've had the increase in the last two days. And then the active cases is good because it is down from its high point. And so we've have a larger number that have recovered, encouraged by that. And then you will see the seven day rolling average of PCR test in Arkansas. And we are still above the 10% line that we want to improve upon. And the antigen tests are the next one. Well, we'll come back to that. But the the cumulative test, we have already set a record in terms of our testing for the month with 330,000 already and the month is not over yet. And this is just a PCR test. And again 300,000 is 10% of our population. Some of those are duplicate test. But as I've pointed out before, the individualized is is getting very high as to the percent of the population that has been tested. The next one is the COVID, PCR test and testing facility type. And you can see that, because of the holidays, we've had a slow turnaround on some of our PCR test. We expect that to pick up again, but you can also see a shift of people to our antigen test. As Dr. Romero pointed out to me that this is the first day that our antigen test results have exceeded our PCR test, we had 6457 antigen tests over the last 24 hours, this is becoming the test of choice, quick, rapid tests that they get the results. And you can see that shift, you'll be interesting to see whether the PCR numbers return to the level that they were previously. The next is the cumulative number of antigen tests over 80,000. You combine that with 330,000, PCR tests, that's over 400,000 that have been tested been administered this month in December. And then we have our positivity, which is higher for antigen test, you can see that that's 20 25%. Obviously, when you're going to get an antigen test, you have a higher probability. Because you're, you're feeling bad, you have symptoms, and that's where you're going to get a rapid test. And then finally, I think he'll not a surprise here on the trend lines. Even though there's been a dip recently, because of Christmas, you can see that really in every area of the state, from Northwest and Northeast to south, that you have a high level of community spread in the community. And with that, thank you for your attention to this today. And we happy to turn it over for questions
on the Moderna vaccine, he said we had gotten 31,000 doses, I think. So I thought initially, we're supposed to get 51,000 last week, and then another 70,000 this week. So does that mean it just hasn't arrived yet?
The Moderna vaccine comes periodically through the week. And so we receive some on Monday and then we'll receive them periodically during the week. Dr. Romero, did you have anything else to add on that? As of this morning, we have received 31,700. During the course of this week, those numbers will go up. And what what gives - Dr. Romero?
So there is also a chunk of that that is given to the federal partners. So remember, our immunizations in the state are divided among two big groups, if you will, that is the federal partners which are CVS and Walgreens, and then our local pharmacies that will be delivering the vaccine. So this is the vaccine we have here in state, there is a chunk that has been sent already to our federal partners to administer. And most overwhelmingly, it's the smaller local pharmacies that are involved in the immunization of the health care long term health care residency. Yes, we can. So I, they, we we will know what they receive, we should also know who they are administering it to. And so we will keep track of track of that through our own system that WebIZ system, and I don't know where we are on having them all registered for it, but we will keep track of that number.
What's the reason for the, well you said you were disappointed in the pace of the ... do you know what the hold up is, what is causing the delay?
Well, first of all, there's some unique challenges in our long term care facilities. You're having to get consent from some of the patients in some circumstances. You're having to train additional staff for the rollout of this. And, and so you're it's a different circumstance than the quickness that we see in the hospital environment. Rachel, do you want to elaborate on that?
The governor is correct on the logistics being a little bit unique in the facilities. The consent process takes time. Some of our Arkansas based pharmacies received initial doses of Moderna vaccine on Monday of last week. And I know that they offered some clinics, one that I was able to attend on site and see that happening on Wednesday of last week. It's my understanding, though, that some of the pharmacies receiving Moderna vaccines didn't get their doses until Wednesday or Thursday, last week, right before Christmas, when there probably were key staff taking off work, the holidays, of course, make things challenging, but they are starting to receive more doses.
And Rachel and I have talked about this. And while there's certainly additional challenges in our long term care facilities, we have to get this out there the most vulnerable population, that's where we're seeing the cases, but more significantly, the deaths. Many of those high percent come from that population. And so it's critical that we accelerate the deployment, the administration of this vaccine, and that's why my team, we've been talking with them encouraging the acceleration of the use of this vaccine and the administration of it. Next question.
Would yousay that the long term care facilities, that's where the most holdup is right now, with getting the vaccines out?
Yes, as I said, we've got 48.2% of our Pfizer vaccine, which is in our healthcare facilities out, but it's a much smaller percent when it comes to our long term care facilities. And the vaccine that's been actually administered, I expect that to accelerate. I'm encouraging it to accelerate as fast as we possibly can, because lives are at stake.
He said, it's unique circumstances, like meeting consent, and the holidays and all of that. So once that's behind us, and we're kind of ramping up what comes what would you be comfortable with as a race for us to actually get them out in the long term care facilities,
let me phrase it this way that I would be very pleased if by the end of January, and my hope and expectation is that by the end of January, all of our health care workers will be vaccinated, all of our long term care residents and staff will be vaccinated. That is the timeframe that we've got to achieve, hopefully a little bit earlier than that. For example, one, pharmacy plans on having all of their responsibilities administered by January 17. And so we recognize there'll be some lag with other pharmacies, but we expect it hoped that that will all be accomplished by the end of January. And that way, we can move to one B. And we can hopefully, we'll have announcements later in January as to what the broader population can expect in terms of when their turn will come for a vaccine. But we've got to get our health care workers or long term care facilities taken care of first January and then February, we'll be moving to New categories in our population, if not sooner.
You have Restaurant and Bar closing expires on Sunday, you can extend
the directee for closing bars and restaurants with bars at 11pm. That does expire I believe January 3, and we will have to look at that as to whether that should be extended. But that's the when it expires at this time. Are there any questions remotely? Andrew, luck with NPR QF. Good afternoon. Good to see you, sir. I'm also included in the $900 billion bipartisan COVID-19 relief packages restoration and Medicaid health benefits to over 60,000 Pacific Islanders migrants that are legally present in the US including 12,000 marshalese and Arkansas please comment on this as well as what the cost share to Arkansas might look like. Thank you. Well, I am delighted that the marshalese population Arkansas will now be covered under the new federal law for Medicaid. This is coverage that it made no sense that they were denied that coverage, and we have a responsibility to them, as well as to our other citizens but it was a glitch in the law. That is Finally been remedied. It's something I've advocated for this will mean a lot in terms of their improved access to health care among that population. That is, that has really been hit hard by COVID, even though we think they have rebounded and are really doing well in terms of supporting their family and education in terms of, of how to avoid the spread of the virus. In terms of the cost to Arkansas, this would be I don't have $1 figure on it. Of course, generally speaking roughly. Whenever there is Medicaid, our allocation is about one third. So of whatever cost that is probably one third of it would fall on the state of Arkansas.
Next question, Andrew, I heard you. Yeah. Thank you, governor had two questions for you. First of all, on the emergency declaration,
extending it one see if or do you have any concerns heading into the legislative session about efforts to scale back the declaration or scale back your emergency powers?
Kind of what's the what are your thoughts? We're heading into the session on that?
And also want to ask about heading into New Year's Dr. Romero had expressed concerns about people getting together and things like that for the holiday? What are their what kind of efforts if any, are there going to be in terms of making sure that restaurants and bars other establishments are complying with the restrictions that you have in place during New Year's considering that's where a lot of times you see people gathering for the holiday? Well, the restaurants, those establishments have really gone the extra length to comply with our public health guidelines. We also inspect, and I think that is encouraged compliance. And so Mike Moore, our Director of enforcement at ABC, as well as the health department inspectors, have really put an emphasis upon compliance. They have issued fines in certain circumstances, but also have served to educate them and inspect them regularly. And so that will continue. And we expect full compliance by those that are obligated to follow those public health guidelines. In terms of the emergency powers. Obviously, the 60 day extension brings us into the legislative session, I fully expect the General Assembly to address this issue. And I would ask them to measure whether we should extend the emergency, I would expect their action on this, just as I asked them to affirm the emergency before December 30th. They wanted to delay that until the regular session, which is their prerogative. And I would love to thank that will be out of the emergency by them. But I don't believe anybody nationally believes will be out of the emergency by mid January. And so I would we've extended this for 60 days, we will work with the legislature as to where it goes from there. Next question.
Yes, Governor, the governor, this is crystal Martinez with kW a news. I want to talk about the vaccination distribution plan. We've seen some fire departments in Northwest Arkansas actually get vaccinated already. So I wanted to ask, who is making the decision on who gets vaccinated first? And really who's whose decision is that?
Well, we sat through the Department of Health the priorities for vaccination. And so that includes again in one a, the health care workers, emergency responders, as well as those in our long term care facilities. And, and so that is the priority right now. So we set that and then we ask our distribution networks to follow that priority. In this case, in my Dr. marrow, do you the fire departments would be part of the emergency response. So it would be part of they would be part of one a priority, Dr. Romero.
So also factoring into that decision of when to vaccinate them is the amount of vaccine that's leftover in a given institution. So if a hospital has a certain amount of vaccine leftover rather than have it go to waste, which we would never want to happen, we would then offer that to those emergency responders, those those first line person so we have had options to do that in the past and We will do that in the future so that we waste no drop of this vaccine.
Thank you.
Emergency Response.
Yeah. And to be clear there, I want to make sure I'm accurate that if if a fire department or emergency responders, paramedics, then they would be in that one a category. Next question.
Yes, Governor, this is Shelby Rose with CHANNEL SEVEN. I have a question regarding the COVID Comm. system. Are these difficulties kind of expected in terms of finding a place for these patients to go?
Dr. Jones, I'm gonna let you elaborate on that.
Thanks for the question. So in some respects, yes, because we're watching the numbers are hospitalizations and our bed capacity. We're watching those numbers very closely. And again, as that capacity goes down, then the availability is also down as well. So in some respects, we did expect some of that there have been some glitches in terms of the data. And we're cleaning up the data so that what's available, and what we see on COVID comm is actually what is truly available for transfer. So those are some of the kinks that we've worked out over these first couple of weeks. And we hope to continue to move that process forward.
Correct, Dr. Jones, that one unexpected twist was that we might have an ICU bed listed as available, but maybe it was not staffed. And so it was not something that we could count on. And that's one of those things that we discovered as we started administering the program, cleaning up some of the data and making sure that our information the system was absolutely correct. Anybody else have a question? opener.
Good afternoon. It's Neil kolodner, KPMG and hotsprings. On hospital capacity. I was wondering you and Dr. America told us continually more new cases eventually lead to more hospitalizations. And then last week, the briefing you laid out with the folks from Baptist Health about the construction of additional beds and additional capacity. Is there predictive modeling about what percentage of these patients will end up in the hospital? And do you end? Do you think there's going to be even more capacity needed than you've already arranged for?
In terms of the predictive modeling? Dr. Romero, do you have that or? Yeah. And so there is some predictive modeling. I did my own predictive modeling. As you can see, when I indicated that we had one third of increase in new cases since Thanksgiving, but we've had a 10% increase in hospitalizations. Now, that is, you know, an illustration in time. But clearly, it points up to the fact that if you have additional cases, some of them will wind up at the hospital. There is specific modeling on that, that we can look at and compare to Arkansas. You know, in terms of our planning based upon that, that's exactly the step we took with Baptist Health. And if we see a continued increase in cases, then I'll be asking my COVID winter taskforce to do additional work in terms of our search capacity and and what additional steps we need to take. Is there any final question?
Dr. Johnson? In fact, patient patients have a waiting list for hospital that doesn't work like where would the patient be while they're on a waiting list.
So those patients are often being held in the emergency department while they're waiting placement. Some hospitals have different processes. I've heard of some hospitals, actually. Beds come available become available and perhaps it's not the type of bed they originally requested. But they often sometimes are able to find other places to put them but most often they're in the emergency department awaiting placement.
With that, thank you for your attention today to this matter and hope everybody has a very safe New Year.