2,245 new cases logged in state; deaths up by 34

Rise lower than day before; epidemiologist remains wary

Arkansas’ count of coronavirus cases rose Saturday by more than 2,200 — a smaller jump than the record number added the previous day but larger than the increase a week earlier.

The state’s death toll from the virus, as tracked by the Department of Health, rose by 34, to 2,620.

“There are 2,245 new COVID-19 cases in Arkansas,” Gov. Asa Hutchinson said in a tweet.

“This is an increase of almost 900 from last week (1,349). We can decrease the numbers if we follow the Three W’s. Wearing a mask, washing your hands, and watching your distance.”

After falling the previous two days, the number of patients hospitalized in the state rose by 15, to 1,056.

That was still short of the record 1,088 covid hospitalizations as of Wednesday.

The number of patients on ventilators fell by 13, to 178.

Saturday’s increase was the ninth one-day spike that

exceeded 2,000 since the start of the pandemic and the largest for a Saturday.

It came after two days of record-setting spikes: an increase of 2,789 Thursday, followed by 2,827 cases that were added Friday.

Previously, the state record for a one-day increase was the 2,348 cases on Nov. 26.

State Epidemiologist Jennifer Dillaha said she was happy to see that the increase Saturday was lower than the one Friday, but she “would not put enough stock in it to say that it would be a trend yet.”

“We haven’t yet seen the full effects of Thanksgiving, so I’m apprehensive about the numbers for this coming week,” she said.

After setting records Friday, the average number of cases added in the state over a rolling seven-day period and the number of cases that were considered active both reached new highs Saturday.

The average daily growth in cases over seven days was 128, to 2,051.

The active-case total rose by 575, to 18,607, as new cases continued to outpace recoveries.

BEDS APPROVED

Also Saturday, the Federal Emergency Management Agency approved Arkansas’ request for 10 beds at John L. McClellan Memorial Veterans Hospital in Little Rock to be made available to expand capacity to care for covid-19 patients, said Melody Daniel, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Public Safety’s Division of Emergency Management.

Hutchinson has said the five medical/surgical beds and five intensive-care beds will cost $1.9 million over 30 days, with the state paying 25% of the cost, or about $475,000, and the federal government paying the rest.

The state had asked for the beds to be available to virus patients who would not normally be eligible for care at the hospital, Daniel has said.

Chris Durney, a spokesman for the Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System, said the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ “Fourth Mission” — along with providing veterans’ health care, maintaining cemeteries and providing other veterans’ benefits — includes offering “surge capabilities into civilian health care systems in the event those systems encounter capacity issues.”

“In times of national emergency, VA can provide care to non-Veterans under an assignment issued by [FEMA] based on a request for assistance from a State government,” Durney, said in an email last week.

“VA will only accept such assignments when they do not negatively impact Veteran care, as taking care of Veterans is always VA’s first priority.

“Non-Veterans should not directly seek care at VA facilities. The provision of care to non-Veterans in connection with the public health emergency is coordinated through FEMA.”

CAUTION URGED

As people develop symptoms, get tested and receive the results, Dillaha said the state likely will continue to see cases associated with Thanksgiving gatherings into this week.

Some people who were infected will pass the virus on to others, resulting in “a surge on top of our current surge,” she said.

She said cases also have been linked to other social gatherings, as well as after-school activities and high school and college sports.

For the coming holidays, she said she recommends that people not travel and celebrate only with members of their own households.

People who do have gatherings with other households should keep the number of attendees under 10, wear masks and keep a safe distance from the outside people, she said.

Christmas shoppers, she said, should avoid crowds and go only to stores where people wear masks and practice social distancing.

“If they enter a store and people are not wearing masks and not socially distancing, they should turn around and walk out and shop somewhere else,” she said.

CASES BY COUNTY

The cases added in the state included 1,801 that were confirmed through polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, tests.

The other 444 were “probable” cases, which include those identified through less-sensitive antigen tests.

The state’s cumulative case count rose to 169,382.

That comprised 146,711 confirmed cases and 22,671 probable ones.

Pulaski County had the most new cases at 246, followed by Washington County with 212, Benton County with 115, Sebastian County with 94, and Faulkner County with 93.

Among prison and jail inmates, the Health Department’s count of cases rose by 51.

Dillaha said 21 of the deaths added Saturday were among nursing-home residents.

The state’s count of virus deaths rose by 32, to 2,402, among confirmed cases and by two, to 218, among probable cases.

VACCINE PLANS

On Friday, Health Department spokeswoman Danyelle McNeill provided the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette with a list of 17 hospitals that are to receive direct shipments of a vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech if it is granted an emergency-use authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

On Saturday, McNeill said NEA Baptist Memorial Hospital in Jonesboro was inadvertently left off the list.

Dillaha said Friday that the state’s initial allotment of the vaccine, expected to be about 25,000 doses, will go primarily to hospital workers.

Direct shipments of the vaccine will go to hospitals with at least 1,000 employees.

Because the minimum size for one shipment is 975 doses, five pharmacies were designated to receive shipments and deliver the vaccine to smaller hospitals, Dillaha has said.

Dillaha said Saturday that the only acute-care hospital with 1,000 or more employees that won’t receive a direct shipment of the initial allotment is Arkansas Children’s “because they have so few covid patients.”

She said it hasn’t yet been decided whether the hospital will receive some of the initial allotment along with the smaller general hospitals.

She said each of the other general, acute-care hospitals will receive some of the allotment, even if they don’t have any covid-19 patients.

“Part of our goal here is to preserve access to acute care, not just for covid patients,” she said.

“Suppose you have a small, rural, critical-access hospital with only a couple of doctors, and they don’t have any covid patients. We would still want to protect them because they could see a covid patient at any time, and if that hospital loses those doctors, then there’s no one to care for the non-covid patients in the hospital.”

About 90 hospitals in the state with acute-care beds are licensed for general medical care, according to a list on the Health Department’s website.

Dillaha said it isn’t known yet whether the initial allotment will be enough to provide doses to psychiatric or rehabilitation hospitals.

“There’s a couple of facilities that are really critical, so if we can we want to do them in the first allocation,” she said.

But, she said, “we have to look more closely at the number of critical employees in the smaller hospitals before we make a commitment.”

An FDA advisory committee is to discuss the request for the emergency-use authorization for the Pfizer vaccine at a meeting Thursday.