COVID-19 UPDATE
As a service to our readers, The Sentinel-Record publishes updates released by the city of Hot Springs and the state of Arkansas.
Gov. Asa Hutchinson held his weekly press update Tuesday at the state Capitol. The following stats were posted Tuesday on the Arkansas Department of Health website:
• 263,410 cumulative confirmed cases, up 174 from Monday.
• 140.29 rolling seven-day average of new confirmed cases, up 5.58 from Monday.
• 2,982,672 PCR test reports, up 3,933 from Monday.
• 8.8% cumulative PCR infection rate, no change from Monday.
• 73,052 cumulative probable cases, up 122 from Monday.
• 15.2% cumulative antigen infection rate, down from 15.3% Monday.
• 2,043 active confirmed and probable cases, up 104 from Monday.
• 328,611 recoveries of confirmed and probable cases, up
187 from Monday.
• 2,525,070 vaccine doses received, up 700 from Monday.
• 1,751,620 doses given, up
10,982 from Monday.
• 192 hospitalizations, up 20 from Monday.
• 28 cases on a ventilator, down one from Monday.
• 72 ICU patients, down six from Monday.
• 4,569 confirmed deaths, up four from Monday.
• 1,183 probable deaths, up one from Monday.
• 2,078 nursing home deaths, up one from Monday.
• 8,528 cumulative confirmed cases in Garland County, up four from Monday.
• 3.57 rolling seven-day average of new confirmed cases, no change from Monday.
• 115,724 PCR and antigen test reports, up 117 from Monday.
• 87,634 private lab reports, up 116 from Monday.
• 28,090 public lab reports, up one from Monday.
• 8.5% cumulative PCR infection rate, no change from Monday.
• 36 active confirmed cases in Garland County, up three from Monday.
• 8,282 recoveries of confirmed cases in Garland County, up one from Monday.
• 1,604 cumulative probable cases in Garland County, up one from Monday.
• Four active probable cases in Garland County, down two from Monday.
• 210 confirmed deaths, no change from Monday.
• 49 probable deaths, no change from Monday.
The state is striving to partially vaccinate 50% of its population by July 31, a rate Hutchinson said requires 467,206 Arkansans to take the vaccine in the next 90 days.
Public health officials have said a 70% rate of vaccination is needed for herd immunity. Just over 1 million Arkansans are partially vaccinated. Hutchinson said 54.9% of the state’s population got a flu shot last year, a rate he said highlights the challenge of getting half the state partially vaccinated by the end of July.
“Our goal is not herd immunity,” he said. “That’s something that should be our goal. But as you can see from our percentage acceptance of the flu shot, it’s going to be challenging for our state. That’s why we’ve made a concentrated effort to get to 50%, and then we want to get higher than that.”
According to information the Health Department provided Tuesday, 32,118 Garland County residents have received at least one dose of vaccine, with 24,434 fully vaccinated. More than 80,000 county residents are vaccine eligible, meaning they’re 16 or older. About 20,000 more county residents need to get vaccinated before half of the county’s roughly 100,000 people are partially or fully inoculated.
Visit https://bit.ly/3eiLqkv to see the county-by-county numbers.
Dr. Gene Shelby, the county’s health officer, told the task force organizing the local response to the virus that two local business owners who each employ 50 to 100 people are educating their workforces on the importance of getting vaccinated.
“I think programs like that, rather than just announcing that the vaccine is available, is to have one-on-one conversations with people, especially if you have a respected person within your organization or even bring someone from outside your organization,” Shelby, according to a city of Hot Springs news release from Monday’s task force meeting, told the task force.
National public health officials have questioned if there’s enough vaccine demand to achieve herd immunity in the near term.
“It’s become obvious to (Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention) and government that herd immunity is not an attainable goal at this time,” Dr. Jose Romero, the state’s secretary of health, said. “What we want to do is try to get as many adults as possible to be immunized.
“Every person that’s fully immunized is one less person in whom the virus can replicate. That will decrease the number of variants. Eventually, either through vaccination or through re-infection, we will attain some degree of immunity to the virus that is now circulating.”