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Senior Arkansas health officials warned Thursday of an imminent threat to patient access to care as the number of coronavirus patients in hospitals rose to double digits for the 10th day in a row.
“Hospitals are all full right now and cases are doubling about every 10 days,” University of Arkansas Chancellor for Medical Sciences Cam Patterson, cardiologist, said on Twitter.
“If this trend continues, there will be significant challenges in providing care for both COVID and non-COVID [patients] over the next 2 weeks. “
Already at its highest level since February 14, the number of covid-19 patients in state hospitals has increased by 22, to 669.
The number of fans increased by 16, to 119, its highest level since February 12.
The number in intensive care increased by three, to 248.
[VIDEO: Fauci links Arkansas’ virus surge with low vaccination rate]
The death toll from the virus, as tracked by the Arkansas Department of Health, increased by four, to 5,981.
Meanwhile, the number of cases in the state has increased by 980.
While larger than any of the daily totals of new cases from mid-February to early last week, it was the first increase in cases in five days that was lower than the increase on the same day. a week earlier.
On the previous Thursday, July 8, the state tally increased by 1,210.
State epidemiologist Jennifer Dillaha said the speed at which the virus is spreading in the state remains of concern.
She and other health officials blamed the increase on Arkansas’ low vaccination rates and the highly transmissible delta variant that first appeared in India.
“I don’t really have hope that the numbers will change until we have a much higher proportion of people vaccinated in Arkansas,” Dillaha said.
[CORONAVIRUS: Click here for our complete coverage » arkansasonline.com/coronavirus]
“The delta variant is just far too contagious to stop on its own.”
Arkansas Surgeon General Greg Bledsoe, an emergency physician and candidate for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor, said he was more concerned about the state of public hospitals now than he was in January, when the number of inpatients peaked at over 1,300.
He is vice-chairman of Governor Asa Hutchinson’s “Winter Covid-19 Task Force”, made up of hospital executives, Department of Health officials and others, which Hutchinson formed in November during a previous surge in case.
The group, which includes Patterson, met by video conference Thursday to discuss the growing volume of patients with covid-19 and ways to encourage vaccinations.
“I think we’re all worried about the beds,” Bledsoe said. “I’m worried about the beds. Hospital administrators are worried about the beds. Emergency physicians in the state are very concerned about the beds.”
He said hospitals have a high number of patients with covid-19 as well as other types of patients, making it difficult to transfer patients from one hospital to another.
“This is very problematic if you are in a small community and you need a cardiologist, a cardiologist if you have a heart attack, or if you have been hit by a car and need to be transferred somewhere. leaves for trauma, “he said. “We are starting to have problems finding beds for these patients.”
If the number of covid-19 patients continues to rise, he said it could affect access to care for all types of patients.
“What I think in the very short term could happen is that we don’t have beds for the people who come in – not just the covid patients but all the patients,” Bledsoe said.
“It’s the biggest, scariest scenario we all have.”
[VACCINE INFO: See the latest information on covid-19 vaccines in Arkansas » arkansasonline.com/vaccineinfo/]
ACTIVE CASES ARE INCREASING
The increase in cases Thursday followed peaks of 1,476 on Tuesday and 1,309 on Wednesday.
After surpassing 1,000 on Wednesday for the first time since February, the average number of cases added to state counts each day over a seven-day period fell to 990.
With new cases exceeding recoveries, however, the number of cases in the state that were considered active increased by 275, to 9,079, the first time since Feb. 16, the number had exceeded 9,000.
Dillaha said 13.3% of the state’s coronavirus tests were positive over a period of seven consecutive days on Wednesday, down slightly from the 14.2% initially reported for the week ending Tuesday.
Hutchinson said he wanted to keep the rate below 10%.
Based on Wednesday’s numbers, rankings from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday showed Arkansas was the state with the highest number of new cases per capita over a seven-day period in a row for on the third consecutive day.
The 7,163 cases added to Arkansas’ tally in the week ending Wednesday resulted in a rate of 237.4 per 100,000 population.
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Missouri had the second highest rate, 203 per 100,000 population, followed by Florida, with 183.2 per 100,000 population.
Arkansas also continued to have the second highest number of new covid-19 deaths per capita, with its 44 deaths during the week rising at a rate of 1.5 per 100,000 population.
Wyoming continued to have the highest rate, with 1.6 per 100,000 population.
Sound the alarm
During Arkansas’ winter covid-19 outbreak, Bledsoe said the overall volume of patients entering emergency rooms was lower than it had been a year earlier.
Now it’s higher, he said.
Additionally, he said the public was “tired of hearing about covid.”
He said he tried to sound the alarm bells on Twitter, in TV interviews and in private conversations.
“It makes me very worried, but the biggest emotion I have is sadness, honestly, because I know there are people walking around who are going to be hurt by this,” Bledsoe said.
“In a weird way, it’s like watching a car crash in slow motion and, you say to people, ‘Please, please.’ And they don’t listen, and sometimes they attack you. “
In a statement Thursday urging the Arkansans to get the vaccine, Arkansas Children’s Hospital executive director Marcy Doderer said not all of the hospital’s covid-19 patients who were discharged this month were not vaccinated, “even if some were eligible for vaccination”.
“Often, children contract covid-19 from unvaccinated peers and adults who don’t have symptoms,” Doderer said.
“We fully expect to see more children become ill with the delta variant of covid-19 because it spreads more easily than previous strains and because children under 12 are not yet eligible to be vaccinated.”
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Of the three vaccines approved for use in the United States, Pfizer’s is licensed for people as young as 12 years old, while Johnson & Johnson’s and Moderna’s are only licensed for people 18 and older. more.
Little Rock Children’s Hospital had 10 covid-19 patients on Thursday, including two on ventilators, spokeswoman Hilary DeMillo said.
Arkansas Children’s Northwest in Springdale had no covid-19 patients, she said.
BAD INFORMATION CITED
At the Northwest Arkansas Council’s annual meeting in Fayetteville on Thursday, Hutchinson said he learned in his meetings from “community covid conversations” around the state that “opposition to the vaccination is not only occasional, but it is organized and is really at the conspiracy level. “
At the first of those meetings last week in Cabot, he said someone showed him an email from an organized group that said the governor was “going around for his mass vaccination clinics.” and suggested “you shouldn’t call them vaccines, you should call these biological weapons.”
Hutchinson told the business group that he and his team were faced with not only the terminology these groups use, but also conspiracy theories that range “from mind control down the line.”
A sign that the state’s vaccinations are resuming, the number of Arkansans who had received at least one dose of the vaccine increased on average by nearly 3,300 per day during the week ending Thursday, according to CDC data.
This was the highest seven-day average since the week ending June 1.
Dillaha called the trend “very encouraging”.
[Interactive Arkansas map not showing up above? Click here to see it: arkansasonline.com/arvirus]
“I hope people gain confidence in vaccines and realize that the risk of getting sick with covid-19 is much greater than the risk of getting the vaccine,” Dillaha said.
Figures from the Department of Health also showed an increase in the total doses given each day, including the second doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, after slowing down over the weekend of July 4.
At 5,624, Thursday’s increase was 100% higher than the previous week’s increase.
The average number of doses administered each day over a rolling seven-day period increased to just over 4,900.
It was still down from an average of over 5,700 per day just before the bank holiday weekend.
According to the CDC, the number of Arkansans who received at least one dose of the vaccine increased Thursday by 4,296, to 1,309,002, or about 43.4% of the state’s population.
The number of people fully immunized increased by 2,274 to 1,060,174, or about 35.1% of the population.
Among states and the District of Columbia, Arkansas continued to rank 45th for the percentage of its residents who had received at least one dose of vaccine and 49th, ahead of only Mississippi and Alabama, for the percentage who had received at least one dose of vaccine. been fully vaccinated.
Nationally, 55.8% of people had received at least one dose and 48.3% were fully immunized.
CASE BY COUNTY
Pulaski County had the most new cases on Thursday, 151, followed by Faulkner County with 75 and Benton County with 61.
The state’s cumulative number of cases has risen to 361,238.
State Department of Corrections spokeswoman Cindy Murphy said the Omega Sanctions Monitoring Center in Malvern had 16 new cases among inmates.
The McPherson unit near Newport and the Central Arkansas Community Correction Center in Little Rock each had a new case.
The Omega center had a total of 23 active cases on Thursday, Murphy said.
The Little Rock blockade had two active cases and the McPherson unit had one.
Statewide, the number of people who have already been hospitalized with confirmed covid-19 infections increased by 26, to 17,573.
The number of people who had ever been on a respirator with covid-19 increased by four to 1,785.
Information for this article was provided by Serenah McKay of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
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