Arkansas Governor: Shelter-in-Place ‘Always an Option on the Table’

Medical personnel move a deceased patient to a refrigerated truck serving as a makeshift morgue at Brooklyn Hospital Center, in New York City, on April 9, 2020. Angela Weiss/AFP/Getty Images

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said it is necessary to hold off on issuing a statewide stay-at-home order despite more than 40 other states implementing such measures.

Hutchinson told CNN that his state’s approach has been effective and added that more measures are on the table.

“If we need to do more we will do more, [it’s] always an option on the table if we have to shelter-in-place,” Hutchinson said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “Right now what we’re doing proves to be successful.”

The only states to not issue stay-at-home orders are Arkansas, Iowa, North Dakota, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Wyoming. Recently, Utah issued a stay-at-home order until the end of this month.

Hutchinson said he prefers a “targeted approach,” calling for locals to wear masks and practice social distancing.

The governor also said that places like New York and New Jersey, which have the most CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus cases, have not gone too far.

“It just reflects the flexibility a state needs. I applaud New Jersey and New York, they’ve had to really lock down,” he told CNN. But he noted that those two states have a higher population density than Arkansas.

As of Saturday, Arkansas’s health department reported more than 1,200 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 24 deaths. In the interview, Hutchinson said the state has about 8,000 available hospital beds and around 80 CCP virus hospitalizations.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said last week that some states, including Arkansas, are “really committed to making sure they don’t get into the situation where they are going to have spikes in their state.”