State’s covid-19 hospitalizations decrease by 50
Death count up 30 for day; 2,318 more cases reported
After setting records for the previous three days, the number of covid-19 patients in Arkansas hospitals fell by 50 on Thursday, but the state’s count of cases rose by 2,318.
The state death toll from the virus, as tracked by the Department of Health, rose by 30, to 6,396.
“Today’s decrease in hospitalizations will provide some help to our strained hospitals,” Gov. Asa Hutchinson said in a tweet.
He said 12 intensive-care beds for covid-19 patients, opened by Baptist Health on Thursday at its main campus in Little Rock with the help of money from the state’s allocation of federal coronavirus relief funds, would provide additional relief.
“Let’s continue to get vaccinated so these beds are not needed,” Hutchinson said.
Also Thursday, the CHI St. Vincent and St. Bernards health systems — encompassing seven hospitals and more than 8,000 employees — became the latest health care providers to announce vaccination requirements for their employees.
Conway Regional Medical Center, meanwhile, announced that it will postpone elective inpatient surgeries starting Monday to make room for a growing number of covid-19 patients.
Dropping for the first time since Friday, the number of covid-19 patients in Arkansas hospitals fell to 1,396 — still higher by 25 than its peak during the winter surge in January.
The Health Department initially reported that the number of virus patients who were on ventilators remained at 296. A report later Thursday indicated it set a record for the fourth straight day as it rose to 298.
The number who were in
intensive care set a record for the second day in a row.
In an email, the Health Department reported that the number rose by four, to 516. It indicated the number of ICU beds that were unoccupied statewide rose by 20, to 34, as a result of a drop in noncovid-19 patients who were in intensive care.
The department’s online dashboard, however, listed 529 covid-19 patients as being in intensive care as of Thursday, an even bigger increase over Wednesday’s number.
BEDS OPENED
The Baptist Health ICU beds are among the first to open with funding from Arkansas’ allocation of money from the American Rescue Plan Act, signed by President Joe Biden in March.
The Legislature’s Joint Budget Committee last week approved spending $37.7 million of the funds to provide 157 staffed beds for coronavirus patients at Baptist Health properties in Little Rock, Fort Smith and Van Buren for up to 60 days.
Baptist Health spokesman Brandon Riddle said three ICU beds in Fort Smith came online Wednesday.
The remaining 142 beds “will continue to open up in phases based upon available staffing and could be open prior to Aug. 20,” Riddle said in an email.
The budget committee last week also approved spending $10.5 million to open 43 additional beds for covid-19 patients at Unity Health-White County Medical Center in Searcy.
Hospital spokeswoman Brooke Pryor said Thursday that the hospital was still working to hire nurses from outside Arkansas to staff the beds.
VACCINATION REQUIREMENTS
In announcing the requirement for employees, St. Bernards Healthcare CEO Chris Barber called vaccination against covid-19 “the single-greatest, most-pressing health initiative in recent years.”
“Quite simply, our patients should not wonder whether they receive care from an unvaccinated person,” Barber said in a news release.
Members of the health system’s leadership must be fully vaccinated by Oct. 1, and all other employees must have their shots by Nov. 1.
Employees hired after Oct. 1 must be fully vaccinated within 30 days.
Spokesman Mitchell Nail said the requirement applies to the more than 3,900 employees at St. Bernards Medical Center in Jonesboro, CrossRidge Community Hospital in Wynne, St. Bernards Five Rivers Medical Center in Pocahontas and clinics throughout northeast Arkansas.
Non-employees who work in the hospitals also will be required to be vaccinated, but a timeline for that hasn’t been set, he said.
Just over 70% of the system’s employees have been vaccinated, Nail said.
Meanwhile, the number out with active infections or quarantining after exposure to the virus has grown from about five earlier this year to 40, which Nail called “alarmingly high considering how widespread the vaccine is.”
“Just in the last week we’ve really seen it explode,” he said. “You remove that amount of employees and it does create some challenges.”
He said the health system already has spent $1 million on financial incentives for employees to get vaccinated and plans to keep offering those for “the foreseeable future.”
At CHI St. Vincent facilities, all employees, as well as non-employees caring for patients, must be fully vaccinated by Nov. 1.
“As health care providers we have a responsibility to help end this pandemic and protect our patients, our colleagues and those in our communities,” the health system said in its announcement.
“Requiring vaccination for our teams is critical to maintaining a safe care environment.”
The health system, which includes hospitals in Little Rock, North Little Rock, Hot Springs and Morrilton, has about 4,200 employees, 49 of whom were in quarantine as of Thursday due to exposure to the coronavirus, spokeswoman Bonnie Ward said in a statement.
OTHER HOSPITALS
The Arkansas Hospital Association said last month that it “strongly supports” policies that require vaccination for hospital employees.
Health care organizations that have announced such requirements include Washington Regional Medical System in Fayetteville; the Missouri-based Mercy health system, which has hospitals in Rogers, Fort Smith and Berryville; Arkansas Heart Hospital in Little Rock; and Medical Associates of Northwest Arkansas, which has 22 clinics in Benton, Washington and Boone counties.
Arkansas Children’s last month announced a vaccination requirement that applies to upper-level employees and new hires.
The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences would likely have a vaccination requirement were it not for Act 977 of 2021, spokeswoman Leslie Taylor said.
The law, passed by the Legislature during this year’s regular session, requires any vaccination mandates imposed by state-owned medical facilities to be submitted to the Legislative Council for approval.
Taylor said seeking approval for such a requirement is “under discussion.”
“I’m sure [lawmakers will] ask good questions, and they’ll have a lot of questions if we decide to go that route,” Taylor said.
Of UAMS’ 11,000 employees, she said, about 87% had been fully vaccinated, and 171 were off work due to active infections or exposure to the virus.
Baptist Health is “urging our staff to take the vaccine as an important step to provide additional protection from the serious consequences of COVID-19, both for themselves and for others,” Riddle said.
About 81% of Baptist’s employees are vaccinated, he said.
“We currently do not mandate the vaccine for our em- ployees, but have not ruled that out for the future,” Riddle said. “For now, we are encouraged that our employee vaccination rate continues to go up without us making it a requirement.”
ELECTIVE PROCEDURES
Conway Regional Health System CEO Matt Troup called suspending elective surgical procedures “a prudent first step” amid a surge in covid-19 hospitalizations.
“We want to be prepared should cases continue to rise and circumstances demand we redirect skilled team members and resources to care for the growing number of COVID-19 patients,” Troup said in a news release.
He said the number of covid-19 patients at Conway Regional Medical Center had risen to as high as 43 during the past week. Since June 1, 88% of the hospital’s coronavirus patients have been unvaccinated.
Elective surgical procedures will resume “as soon as possible,” he said.
CHI St. Vincent Hot Springs announced a pause on elective surgeries last week.
The Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System said it had also paused non-urgent surgical procedures, and Baxter Regional Medical Center in Mountain Home said it had postponed any procedure requiring an overnight stay.
Spokesmen for St. Bernards, UAMS Medical Center and Baptist Health said they had not cut back on elective procedures.
St. Bernards had more than 90 covid-19 patients on Thursday, which was approaching its peak of more than 100 during the winter surge, Nail said.
“We’re awfully close, and we could easily get there in a day if the trend does not reverse,” he said.
The patients hospitalized on Thursday included 27 who were in intensive care, of whom 18 were on ventilators.
“The last two days, we’ve had seven people pass away,” while 30 new covid-19 patients were admitted, he said.
Although he didn’t have current numbers, he said 87% of the hospital’s covid-19 patients had not been vaccinated as of late June, which is “probably indicative of our current patient volume.”
“Anecdotally, I’m hearing that we’re having a really large volume of younger individuals, under age 50,” he said. “We’re seeing multiple family members hospitalized with it as well.”
UAMS Medical Center in Little Rock had 67 covid-19 patients, up from 64 a day earlier, Taylor said.
The patients on Thursday included 19 who were in intensive care, 13 who were on ventilators and three who were on heart-lung bypass machines.
“We had one new death, so that’s seven in the last week,” Taylor said.
Nine of the patients in the hospital on Thursday, all with health conditions other than covid-19, had been fully vaccinated, she said.
At its 11 hospitals around Arkansas, Baptist Health had 273 covid-19 patients, including 108 who were in intensive care, Riddle said.
He said 10% of the patients had been fully vaccinated.
Ward said 93% of patients at CHI St. Vincent hospitals had not been fully vaccinated. The health system “refers to the Arkansas Department of Health’s reporting on the number of patients with Covid-19 in our area for a consistent regional perspective,” she said.
ACTIVE CASES RISE
The increase in cases Thursday was the first one in four days that was smaller than a week earlier.
After reaching a nearly seven-month high the week ending Saturday, the average daily increase in the state’s case count over a rolling-seven day period fell by about 66, to 2,273.
With new cases outpacing recoveries, however, the number of cases in the state that were considered active, already at its highest level since Jan. 17, rose by 218, to 24,433.
With the start of the school year for most public schools arriving next week, the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement said Thursday that 182 school districts had 50 or more new cases per 10,000 residents within their boundaries over a two-week period ending Monday, up from 140 a week earlier.
Forty-two of the districts had 100 or more new cases per 10,000 residents, up from 16 a week earlier.
The new cases include those among people living within a district’s boundaries. They exclude those among prison or jail inmates and residents of nursing homes and human development centers.
“Infection rates in Arkansas communities have been increasing each week, and our soaring hospitalization and death counts bear out that we are in the midst of a COVID-19 surge driven by the highly contagious delta variant,” Center for Health Improvement CEO Joe Thompson, a pediatrician, said in a news release.
“This week, only seven school districts in the state have 14-day infections rates of fewer than 30 new known infections per 10,000 district residents. With the start of the school year imminent, it is crucial that school leaders use every tool they have to protect kids: vaccination for those who are eligible, universal indoor mask requirements, social distancing, good hand hygiene, and increased ventilation.”
STATE RANKINGS
State Epidemiologist Jennifer Dillaha said she’d love for the state’s surge in cases to be slowing down, but it was too soon to tell if that was the case.
“It’s kind of hard to feel very confident, and we have lots of things going on in our communities right now,” she said.
“Schools are getting ready to start, a lot of travel, social gatherings and so forth, so I think we’ll just have to wait and see how things go.”
She said 16.2% of the state’s coronavirus tests were positive during the seven-day span ending Wednesday, down slightly from the 16.3% that was initially reported for the week ending Tuesday.
Hutchinson has said he wants to keep the number below 10%.
According to rankings on Thursday from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Arkansas continued to have the country’s fourth-highest number of new cases per capita over a rolling seven-day period, behind Louisiana, Florida and Mississippi.
Arkansas’ new deaths per capita continued to be the third-highest, behind Louisiana and Nevada.
Within Arkansas, Washington County had the most new cases Thursday, 274, followed by Pulaski County, which had 226, and Benton County, which had 162.
Dillaha said 25 of the deaths reported Thursday occurred within the past month, and the others happened in May.
The number of people who have ever been hospitalized with confirmed infections in the state grew by 62, to 19,626.
The number who have ever been on a ventilator rose by five, to 1,988.
“Anecdotally, I’m hearing that we’re having a really large volume of younger individuals, under age 50. We’re seeing multiple family members hospitalized with it as well.”
— Mitchell Nail, spokesman for St. Bernards Medical Center in Jonesboro and other facilities in northeast Arkansas.
VACCINATIONS UP
At 13,093, the increase in vaccine doses that providers reported having administered, including second doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, was the second daily increase in a row that was larger than the one week earlier.
The average number of doses administered each day over a rolling seven-day period rose to 10,419.
That remained below a recent high of 12,950 doses a day during the week ending Monday, however.
According to the CDC, the number of Arkansans who had received at least one dose rose Thursday by 7,314, to 1,505,180, representing about 49.9% of the state’s population.
The number of people who had been fully vaccinated rose by 4,429, to 1,147,261, or about 38% of the population.
Among the states and District of Columbia, Arkansas continued to rank 40th in the percentage of its residents who had received at least one vaccine dose and 46th, ahead of Idaho, Louisiana, Wyoming, Mississippi and Alabama, in the percentage who had been fully vaccinated.