Ventilator use hits new high in state

Count climbs by 12 as hospital stays drop off; tally of cases rises by 2,407

The number of covid-19 patients in Arkansas hospitals fell Friday even as the number on ventilators set a record for the second day in a row.

The state count of cases rose by 2,407, an increase that was smaller by more than 600 than the one the previous Friday.

The state death toll from the virus, as tracked by the Department of Health, rose by 33, to 6,614.

“While our new cases are lower than last week, we have sadly reached a new high for COVID-19 patients on a ventilator in Arkansas,” Gov. Asa Hutchinson said in a tweet.

After rising Thursday, the number of covid-19 patients in hospitals fell by 13, to 1,397.

That was down from an all-time high of 1,459 reached Monday but still larger by 26 than the peak in January during the winter surge.

The number of virus patients on ventilators rose by 12, to 343.

The number in intensive care grew by eight, to 533, which was still short of the record 553 as of Monday.

Statewide, 19 intensive care units were unoccupied on Friday, down from 23 on Thursday.

Friday’s increase in cases resumed a mostly downward trend in newly identified infections since Aug. 7, when the average daily increase over a rolling seven-day period hit a nearly seven-month high of 2,351.

An exception was the spike of 3,549 cases on

Thursday, which was the state’s fourth-highest one-day increase since the start of the pandemic.

The average daily case increase over seven days fell to 2,191 as of Friday.

With new cases outpacing recoveries, the number of cases considered active rose by 191, to 24,978, which was still below the seven-month high of 25,735, the number reached Sunday.

“I can see that we are still having a higher number of cas- es than I would like, but they weren’t as bad as last week,” said Dr. Jennifer Dillaha, who is now the Health Department’s chief medical officer.

“Hospitalizations went down slightly, but the ventilators went way up, and of course we had a large number of deaths.

“To me, it fits with the high number of cases we’ve seen recently. A certain proportion of them progress to hospitalization, and a certain proportion of those do not do well.”

She said 15.8% of the state’s coronavirus tests were positive during the seven-day span ending Thursday, up from the 15.1% that was initially reported for the week that ended Tuesday.

Hutchinson has said he wants to keep the percentage below 10%.

Formerly the state epide- miologist, Dillaha said she was named last week to her new position, which includes the title of medical director for immunizations and outbreak response.

BEDS OPENED

Despite the statewide drop in hospitalized covid-19 patients, the number at Baptist Health’s 11 hospitals rose by six, to 298, setting a record for the second day in a row, spokeswoman Cara Wade said.

The health system on Friday opened 12 more beds for covid-19 patients at its hospital in Van Buren under a contract with the state to increase hospital capacity.

The Baptist Health beds already opened under the contract include 12 intensive-care beds and 50 regular beds in Little Rock, 21 intensive-care beds in Fort Smith and 12 regular hospital beds in Van Buren.

“We are working to open the remaining 50 beds in Van Buren,” Wade said.

“The target date with the state of Arkansas is to open all beds by August 25. Our goal is to finish ahead of schedule. However, these dates could move based on availability of staffing resources.”

The state earlier this month allocated $37.7 million in coronavirus relief funds to open and staff the 157 beds for 60 days.

Wade said 76 of Baptist Health’s covid-19 patients were being treated in the newly opened spaces.

“All of the remaining beds currently available are medical beds that are not as in high demand as an ICU bed,” she said.

Out of all 298 virus patients, 129 were in intensive care and 92 were on ventilators, Wade said. She said 90% of the patients had not been fully vaccinated.

The state also has allocated $10.4 million for 43 beds at Unity Health-White County Medical Center in Searcy.

Unity Health spokeswoman Brooke Pryor said Friday that the hospital had hired nine people to staff the beds and had made 17 other offers that were pending.

“We have enough right now to open 5 beds,” Pryor said in a text message. “We are only one day nurse away from opening 10 beds.”

She said the first beds would be open by Sept. 7, about a week later than the time frame she gave earlier in the week.

‘BREATHER’ FOR UAMS

UAMS Medical Center had 52 covid-19 patients, which was down by about 20 since the weekend, spokesman Leslie Taylor said.

“We’re certainly pleased, because it gives us a little bit of a breather, but we know how quickly those numbers can change,” she said.

Over the past few days, she said, the hospital had been able to accept transfers of patients from other hospitals, and the waiting time in the emergency room had fallen.

“There’s always a wait but it’s not hours and hours as it has been,” she said.

The patients on Friday included 20 in intensive care, 13 on ventilators and two on heart-lung bypass machines.

Ten of the patients, all with compromised immune systems or other health conditions besides covid-19, were fully vaccinated, Taylor said.

She said some fully vaccinated people had been admitted recently from nursing homes.

“We think it’s a good indication that getting the booster shots to that more at-risk population is good,” Taylor said, referring to the third doses of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines that were recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week for people with moderately or severely compromised immune systems.

Rachel Bunch, director of the Arkansas Health Care Association, said a “good number” of the state’s 15,000 nursing home residents likely qualify for the third doses.

She said a meeting is scheduled with state officials and others on Monday to discuss plans for administering the doses.

Most homes are now administering

monoclonal antibodies to residents who are infected, as well as those exposed to an infected person, which has helped reduce the number of residents being hospitalized with the virus, she added.

UAMS, which has offered monoclonal antibodies in Little Rock for several months, started offering the treatment about two weeks ago in Helena-West Helena, Taylor said.

UAMS announced this week that it also is administering the treatment at its Fayetteville campus.

The treatment is available to UAMS and non-UAMS patients with mild to moderate symptoms who have an elevated risk of severe complications from covid-19.

SCHOOL CASES

Hutchinson on Thursday linked the spike in cases that day to the start of classes this week at most of the state’s public kindergarten-through-12th-grade schools.

According to state education leaders, however, no school or districtwide shifts to virtual education had occurred as of Friday in response to outbreaks or quarantines.

In the 72-hour period ending at 3 p.m. Friday, the Little Rock School District reported that two employees and 45 students had tested positive for the virus.

An additional five employees and 352 students were required to quarantine.

A broader look at a period that started at 3 p.m. Aug. 13 and covers the entire first week of school shows there were 103 people — nine employees and 94 students — who tested positive. An additional 11 staff members and 452 students were required to quarantine.

The capital city district of about 21,000 students will begin reporting covid cases and quarantines on a daily basis beginning Monday.

A school-by-school breakdown was provided for the 72 hours that ended Friday afternoon. In that time period, 32 campuses had cases or quarantines.

Don Roberts Elementary School reported three student infections and 77 quarantined pupils.

Southwest High School had five student cases and one employee case and 32 students quarantined.

Parkview High also had five cases among students and one employee case, tying Southwest for the highest number of cases in the designated time period.

The district’s administration building had one person in quarantine.

OTHER DISTRICTS

In the Marion School District in eastern Arkansas, 45 students and six employees tested positive during the week and 221 people were required to quarantine, the district reported.

Since classes started on July 26 in Marion, the district has had 188 cases and 1,679 quarantines.

The Bentonville School District, which started classes Monday, reported 126 cases and 198 quarantines as of Thursday.

The Bentonville, Marion and Little Rock school districts have adopted requirements for students and employees to wear masks after a ruling by Pulaski County Circuit Judge Tim Fox that cleared the way for such mandates.

The ruling was in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Act 1002 of 2021, which prohibits most state and local government entities from requiring people to wear masks.

Fox’s ruling halted the enforcement of the law while the case is pending.

The Little Rock and Marion districts are plaintiffs in the suit.

The Bentonville district, meanwhile, was sued in Benton County Circuit Court this week by three parents who say the district overstepped its authority in adopting a mask requirement.

The district on Thursday moved the case to federal court, saying in part that lifting the mandate would require the district to go against guidance from the CDC and a federal rule requiring masks to be worn on school buses.

The plaintiffs asked for the case to be sent back to the state court.

TRACING LAGS

With daily case increases still up dramatically compared with two months ago, the state’s two contact tracing vendors have been looking to hire.

General Dynamics Information Technology of Falls Church, Va., reported that the percentage of infected Arkansans it had contacted or attempted to contact within 24 hours of being assigned the case dropped from 99.9% the week ending Aug. 7 to 65.7% last week.

Over the same period, the average time it took to reach each person more than doubled, from about 14 hours to almost 29 hours.

That delay was partially offset by a reduction in the average amount of time it took to reach the “contacts” who were instructed to quarantine after being potentially exposed to the virus.

The time required to reach each contact dropped from more than 16 hours to less than eight hours.

Still, the average amount of time spent to complete each case rose from about 29 hours to more than 35 hours.

The other vendor, the Arkansas Foundation for Medical Care, didn’t show a similar reduction in performance because it “has been able to locate and add staff at a different pace,” Health Department spokeswoman Danyelle McNeill said.

She said each vendor was working to add 100 or more staff members.

The Arkansas Foundation for Medical Care had 145 workers assigned to case investigation and contact tracing as of Wednesday, and General Dynamics had 112, McNeill said.

“We scaled down at the time when the numbers started going down, so they’re in the process now of hiring new people, training new people, but they’re able to keep up pretty well right now,” Health Department Chief of Staff Renee Mallory said at Hutchinson’s weekly news conference on Thursday.

McNeill said the Arkansas Foundation for Medical Care is paid $25.70 an hour for each contact tracer and $11,741 a month for each nurse employed as a case investigator.

General Dynamics is paid $4,601.30 a month for each contact tracer and $20,000 a month for each case investigator.

Money for the contracts comes from a CDC grant, she said.

STATE RANKINGS

According to rankings Friday by the CDC, Arkansas continued to have the country’s fourth-highest number of new cases per capita, behind Mississippi, Louisiana and Florida, over a rolling seven-day period.

It also continued to have the second-highest number of new deaths per capita, after Louisiana.

Within Arkansas, Pulaski County had the most new cases on Friday, 229, followed by Washington County, which had 220, and Benton County, which had 158.

The state’s cumulative count of cases rose to 431,507.

Dillaha said five deaths reported Friday happened in late June. The others occurred within the past month.

The number of people who have ever been hospitalized in the state with confirmed infections grew by 67, to 20,423.

The number who have ever been on a ventilator rose by 13, to 2,082.

REWARDS CLAIMED

Hutchinson announced in late May that Arkansans who received a vaccine dose May 26 or after would be eligible for one of two rewards: a $20 scratch-off lottery ticket or a pair of gift certificates for hunting and fishing licenses worth a total of $21.

Scott Hardin, a spokesman for the state Department of Finance and Administration, said the number of people who had claimed ticket winnings rose last week by 642, to 3,851.

“The number has steadily increased after falling to a low of 207 for the second week of July,” Hardin said in an email.

“Since then the weekly numbers have been 373, 577, 597, 607 and 642.”

So far, one person, a Texas man who had been visiting relatives in Arkansas, has won $1 million from one of the tickets.

The other winnings, in amounts ranging from $20 to $500, rose last week by $27,310, to $166,330.

One more $1 million ticket remained in circulation in the game, known as the $1 Million Spectacular, along with one $50,000 prize and two $10,000 prizes.

People can claim the rewards at vaccination clinics organized by the Health Department or the Arkansas Foundation for Medical Care or by taking their vaccination cards to one of the department’s local health units.

McNeill said 15,313 people had received lottery tickets and 6,745 had received gift certificates as of Friday.

VACCINATIONS DOWN

For the third-straight day, however, Health Department figures indicated a slowdown in vaccinations.

At 9,143, the increase in doses that providers reported having administered, including second and third doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, was smaller by more than 4,400 than the one a week earlier.

The average number of doses administered each day over a rolling seven-day period fell to 9,908, dropping below 10,000 for the first time since the week ending Aug. 2.

According to the CDC, the number of Arkansans who had received at least one vaccine dose rose by 4,888, to 1,555,389, or about 51.5% of the state’s population.

The number who had been fully vaccinated rose by 5,336, to 1,188,495, or about 39.4% of the population.

After overtaking Missouri a day earlier, Arkansas as of Friday was again roughly tied with the Show-Me State for having the 37th-highest percentage of residents who had had at least one vaccine dose.

In the percentage of its residents fully vaccinated, Arkansas moved up from No. 46 to No. 45, essentially tied with Louisiana and West Virginia and ahead of Idaho, Wyoming, Mississippi and Alabama.

Nationally, 60.4% of people had received at least one dose, and 51.2% were fully vaccinated.