LITTLE ROCK (AP) – Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson lauded President Donald Trump on Monday for signing into law a massive bipartisan bill that, among other things, divvies up billions of dollars for states to procure vaccines and treatments to help fight the coronavirus pandemic.
“It is great news for Arkansans that the latest COVID-19 Relief bill has been signed by @realDonaldTrump,” Hutchinson, a Republican like Trump, tweeted. “This will help our small businesses, individuals, schools and the state with vaccine distribution.”
The initial round of virus shots started two weeks ago in Arkansas and went to health care workers. The state announced last week that two facilities will be built to provide over 100 more hospital beds in case they are needed after the state hit a record high number of hospitalizations of COVID-19 patients.
Trump approved the $2 trillion-plus bill late Sunday while in Florida, where he is spending the holidays, after refusing to act on it and sparking political chaos in Washington, with the threat of a shutdown of federal agencies plus a lapse in unemployment benefits for millions of Americans.
Besides added unemployment benefits and $600 relief payments to families, the package provides money for businesses, transit systems and much more. It also extends pandemic-era protections against evictions.
Trump signed the bill while demanding larger $2,000 pandemic relief checks for families, though that effort was likely to fail and put him at odds with other Republicans. Democrats support the larger stipends, but Trump’s Republican allies in the Senate oppose more spending.
Arkansas has seen 3,482 COVID-19 related deaths to date, according to researchers from Johns Hopkins University, whose researchers have been at the forefront of the global response to COVID-19. That death count is the 16th highest per capita in the U.S. at 115.5 deaths per 100,000 people.
One in every 228 people in Arkansas tested positive in the past week, according to Johns Hopkins.
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