Arkansas Department of Health 

The Secretary of Health has issued this Directive in conjunction with Executive Order 20-25, which imposed limitations on businesses in the state of Arkansas to limit the spread of COVID19. This directive to include the following steps that must be taken to protect the people of the State of Arkansas from COVID-19. 

All businesses, manufacturers, and construction companies must implement the following protocols for diminishing the threat of COVID-19: 

a. Limit the number of people who can enter into the facility at any one time to ensure that people in the facility can easily maintain a minimum six-foot distance from one another. 

b. At places where lines form at a facility (inside or outside), facilities should mark off sixfoot increments at a minimum, establishing where individuals should stand to maintain a physical distance of six feet. 

c. Employees entering a facility should wear a face covering to diminish potential spread if they are asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic for COVID-19, especially when maintaining a physical distance of six feet is not possible. 

d. Customers or members of the public entering a facility should be strongly encouraged to wear a face covering to reduce the potential for introducing COVID-19 into the facility. 

e. Employees should be screened for fever, cough, shortness of breath, sore throat, or loss of taste or smell as they are entering the building at the beginning work. 

f. Provide hand sanitizer, soap and water, or effective disinfectant at or near the entrance of the facility and in other appropriate areas for use by the public and employees, and in locations where there is frequent employee interaction with members of the public. 

g. Retail businesses are encouraged to provide contact-less payment systems or provide for the disinfection of all payment portals, pens, and styluses after each use. 

h. Regularly disinfect any high-touch surfaces. 

i. Signs must be posted at all entrances advising the public not to enter if they have fever, cough, shortness of breath, sore throat, or loss of taste or smell, and if they have had known exposure to someone with Covid-19 in the past 14 days. An example can be found here: https://www.healthy.arkansas.gov/images/uploads/pdf/COVID-19_No_Entry.pdf

 j. Signs must be posted at all building entrances advising the public that they may wish to refrain from entering if they are 65 years of age or older or have underlying health conditions including high blood pressure, chronic lung disease, diabetes, severe obesity, asthma or weakened immunity. See above link for an example. 

k. Employees who are diagnosed with COVID-19 must be reported to the Arkansas Department of Health. Businesses should assist ADH staff in conducting contact tracing in their facilities, in order to prevent an outbreak from occurring. 

l. Consider maintaining a log with dates and time of persons entering a facility to facilitate contact tracing in the event an outbreak occurs. 

Commercial lodgings and short-term rentals, including, but not limited to, hotels, motels, and vacation rentals, are no longer limited as to the type of guests they can house that were delineated in the directive of April 4, 2020. Quarantine requirement for travelers to Arkansas and those returning to Arkansas: A 14-day self-quarantine is required for travelers entering Arkansas who have visited an international location or an area of high community transmission in the United States in the previous 14 days. In the interest of the public health, all travelers who return from international travel or from one of the identified “hot-spot” locations in the United States listed HERE, are required to quarantine for 14 days, starting from the date they departed that location. They are instructed to notify the Arkansas Department of Health of their entry or return to Arkansas by calling the ADH Coronavirus Hotline at 1-800-803-7847 or by emailing their contact information to https://www.healthy.arkansas.gov/images/uploads/pdf/COVID-19_No_Entry.pdf. 

Arkansas State Parks have their own guidelines with updates found at https://www.arkansasstateparks.com/covid-19-update.