ARKANSAS COVID SPIKE— Arkansas is deploying National Guard members to help with hospitals' COVID-19 testing sites as the state's coronavirus virus continues to spike. Gov. Asa Hutchinson on Tuesday said he's authorized 50 Guard members to assist at hospitals around the state, in addition to 10 deployed Monday at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. Arkansas’s Department of Health on Tuesday reported 6,562 new virus cases, the biggest one-day jump since the pandemic began. Governor Asa Hutchinson explained that the state has spent $60 million dollars to meet any surge in Covid19.
"That's going to pay dividends in the event we have to once again, increase hospital space," Hutchinson said. "The challenge of course is the staffing and the department of health will be leading the effort to coordinate with the hospitals what resources are needed to open those beds up again if we need that. And we are making those plans for the future."
Hospital officials everywhere have said a big challenge is dealing with healthcare staff who can’t work because of getting infected with the highly contagious omicron variant and that the number of new cases is likely higher because of people testing at home or people who are infected but haven’t been tested.