(CNN) -- Arkansas Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson said Tuesday he regrets approving a statewide ban on face mask mandates earlier this year and has called the state Legislature into a special session in an effort to amend the law. "In hindsight, I wish that had not become law," Hutchinson said during a news conference. "But it is the law, and the only chance we have is either to amend it or for the courts to say that it has an unconstitutional foundation." The governor's comments -- a shift from his earlier defense of the measure -- reflect the changing public health landscape across the US brought on by the highly transmissible Delta variant. On Tuesday, for the first time since February, more than 50,000 hospital beds across the country were occupied by COVID-19 patients, according to new data from the US Department of Health and Human Services. That number is more than triple what it was a month ago.