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First presumptive case of Coronavirus announced in Arkansas Share Shares Copy Link Copy

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good morning to everyone. We've just completed a very productive cabinet meeting. I want to thank all of my secretaries for their diligent work. I've asked them to prepare continuity of operations plans in light of the Corona virus. We obviously have those plans in place, but I've asked them to tailor make those under the current circumstances. I particularly want Thio thank Dr Nate Smith and his team at the Department of Health for its tireless work and his tireless work and coordinating our state's response to the potential Corona virus outbreak. In addition to Dr Smith, I've had regular conferences with the vice president and his team, including the CDC and the officials at Health and Human Services. Late yesterday, I spoke to numerous governors on a called who. These governors have had multiple confirmed cases in their state. One, uh, particularly struck me as informative. The governor of Massachusetts and my friend Charlie Baker was telling me that of the case of the Biogen executives that attended a leadership conference in his state. So this is a company leadership conference, and there were about 100 and 75 attendees out of those 175 attendees. There's been 70 confirmed positive or presumptive cases out of that one conference, and that tells me that one, uh, positive case leads very quickly to other can potentially lead quickly to other positive cases. In that close contact at that conference certainly impacted the 70 confirmed cases that are currently in operation. And, of course, the elderly are most at risk and they're the greatest concern. And today I've talked early today with Dr Smith and the Department of Health. Have concerned confirmed Arkansas's first presumptive case of the Corona virus in Arkansas. I say it's a presumptive case because the testing has been done by the Arkansas Department of Health and, well, now send that to the CDC for confirmation, which is our routine practice. This case is a patient in Pine Bluff. The patient has had a out of state travel history. The Department of Health has dispatched a team to the hospital where the patient is in isolation on there's not any general risk to the public. But the Department of Health team will be taken the proper precautions, their asses. The patient is in isolation, but this is again our first case in Arkansas, and that has triggered a number of of important initiatives that we need to do as a state. I've directed, as I said, each Cabinet Department to review their plans to make sure that we're prepared. Each plan was presented to us today, and essential State Service's will continue in the event that the Corona virus is beyond what we see right now in our state. At the current time, there's not a need to do all our work remotely. There's not any need to disrupt our state Service is our business will continue as usual, but we are prepared in the event that there is a necessity of it to go into more remote operations to continue. State service is we're encouraging all employees to stay home if sick or having flu like sited a new travel policy for the next 60 days, there'll be no out of state travel without the approval of a Cabinet secretary. The approval be based upon guidance from the Department of Health and the urgency of the travel, and I'll emphasize that travel is can be different under different circumstances. You could be traveling in an automobile, too particular destination and coming back. There's not any risk associated with that. It could be to a not affected area. And so those air decisions that she made on a case by case basis is not a complete travel ban because we want to continue business. We want people to continue doing business with Arkansas, just as they do in the private sector, so work will continue. But we do want to take that appropriate precaution to ask the Cabinet secretaries to approve travel for their employees out of state in terms of the public, in addition to the normal preventive measures I'm concerned about. Upcoming travel plans by our Kansas spring break is fast approaching, and travel plans have been made for trips across the country and the globe. I urge our Kansans to rethink, to reconsider every trip out of state, ask some simple questions. Is it to a state or area with confirmed cases? Does the trip include large gatherings with other people from multiple unknown locations? When you return, will you have contact with the elderly or with other large groups? Are you driving or going by mass transportation? Are they're safer options for the vacation? These air reasonable questions that are Kansan should ask themselves as they look at their travel plans for the fall very similar to the questions that will be asking state employees if there's travel plans necessitated by work out of state. I've been asked about our state plans. I hope that you can see that we have plans in place. We don't discuss all the plans because it's not necessary. Under the current environment, we take this a day at a time. We hope that we'll continue to mitigate the risk from the Corona virus. But we have plans in the event that it is a larger challenge that we face. Everyone should know that we're prepared as we can be for the future and any upturn in the outbreak and we will be continuing government service is under any circumstances. Today I'll be signing an executive order declaring a public health emergency in Arkansas as a result of the Corona virus case that we have a presumptive confirmation of and we have emergency order that's been prepared for my signature that I'll be signing later today. You'll be provided a copy of that that does address a number of emergency measures that are important for continuing business in the state for going about our activities as normal, but also giving our managers are responders of the authority that they need as well as the extra resource is that they might need and to cut through red tape that will allow them to address the current circumstances. Health experts say that we are nationally past the point of containment, and we've moved to mitigation. And so we're doing that here in the state of Arkansas. Thankfully, we don't have what some other states are facing right now, but we want to be a CZ prepared as we can, and we need the public's health to do that. And now I'd like to ask Dr Smith Thio, make comments from public health standpoint. Thank you, Governor. First, I'd like to say that the report of the first productive, presumptive positive case in our state was not unexpected in that over 30 states have already reported cases, including most of the surrounding states, and so we were prepared for this possibility and are acting on it. Second, although this is a presumptive result, we're moving ahead identifying any potential contacts monitoring them. We will test any who are or who have symptoms and, uh, will be moving ahead to gather more information. And third, at this point, we don't have evidence of spread within the pine Bluff community or cases elsewhere in the state, a cz the governor mentioned. Based on the information we have at this time, this infection was likely acquired through travel to another state. And we will follow up on any contacts within the state on will continue to keep you, uh, informed of the progress and what additional findings Ah, arise. Thank you, Dr Smith for Smith. And with that, we'll turn over for any questions. That is correct. We're no worse. And we're still looking at the complete travel history. But that is the preliminary information that we have on the travel history that it was associated with out of state travel. I'm not aware of any international travel. This point will continue to look at that travel history. Uh, Dr Smith, we really have very limited information at this point. This test, really this presumptive positive was just reported this morning. So we're still gathering information. Really? Wait. Work. That's No, I do not. I think that in Arkansas with the limited exposure that we have with one case, only one case that is presumed positive. There's not any need for canceling events. I do not see any need for canceling school activities, and I