Already at its lowest level in more than three months, the number of people hospitalized with covid-19 in Arkansas fell Friday for the 12th day in a row.
The numbers of virus patients who were on ventilators and in intensive care, however, both rose after falling a day earlier.
The state's count of cases grew by 714, the fourth daily increase in a row that was smaller than the one a week earlier.
Arkansas' death toll from the virus, as tracked by the Department of Health, rose by 16, to 8,192.
"We are still seeing a steady amount of new cases each day as this week comes to a close, but active cases have dropped slightly," Gov. Asa Hutchinson said in a tweet.
He said the Health Department would be offering covid-19 vaccines at the Arkansas State Fair in Little Rock, which started Friday.
Dr. Jennifer Dillaha, the Health Department's chief medical officer, said the state's new cases still appeared to be on a plateau after declining more sharply the past few weeks.
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"I like it that the numbers are lower, but they're still not low enough," she said.
The number of virus patients in Arkansas hospitals fell by four, to 501.
After falling by 10 on Thursday, the number who were on ventilators rose by eight, to 161.
The number who were in intensive care rose by 20, to 263, its highest level in six days.
The number of the state's intensive-care beds that were unoccupied, however, rose by 20 to 130, primarily as a result of fewer non-covid patients.
People with covid-19 made up about 24% of the state's intensive-care patients, up from 22% a day earlier.
MANDATE EXTENDED
Meanwhile, the state Board of Corrections extended the mask mandate for state prisons once again despite a growing sense among board members of wanting to see an end date.
Solomon Graves, secretary of the Department of Corrections, told the board he wanted to see the prison staff and inmates reach a 70% vaccination rate before removing the mask mandate.
He said right now the prison system is a little above 50%, with more than 9,000 inmates and almost 3,000 employees having received shots.
The department had about 4,500 employees as of late July and an average daily inmate population in June of 16,339.
A couple of board members said they wanted to start pinning down the mandate's end, but Graves cautioned against rushing into it.
ACTIVE CASES FALL
The increase in cases Friday was smaller by 25 than the one the previous Friday.
Already at its lowest level since the week ending July 8, the average daily increase over a rolling seven-day period fell to 642.
After rising a day earlier, the number of cases in the state that were considered active fell by 67, to 6,753, as recoveries and deaths outpaced new cases.
The total as of Friday, however, was up by 51 compared with Wednesday.
If the total doesn't drop more, Dillaha said, "that will give us ample opportunity to spread covid-19 when people start moving indoors with colder weather."
"That gives us a fairly large reservoir of active cases to continue to spread from," she said.
Dillaha and other health officials have expressed concern about the potential combination of an uptick in covid-19 cases during the winter and a more severe flu season after an unusually mild 2020-21 season.
In its first weekly flu report this season, the Health Department on Tuesday reported "minimal" flu activity so far.
But Dillaha said visits to doctor's offices by people with flu-like symptoms are already up compared with the same time last year.
"Even this past summer, the percent of outpatient visits due to influenza-like illness were higher than our usual baseline, so that tells me it's around, and it could take off if we're not careful," she said.
STATE RANKINGS
According to rankings Friday from the the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Arkansas' number of new cases per capita went from being 15th-lowest among the states and the District of Columbia during the seven-day span ending Wednesday to the 16th-lowest the week ending Thursday.
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In new deaths, Arkansas went from having the 19th-highest rate to the 20th-highest as its number per 100,000 residents over seven days fell from 3.5 to 3.1.
Within Arkansas, Pulaski and Benton counties tied for having the most new cases Friday with 56 each.
Hot Spring County, home to two state prisons in Malvern, had the next-highest number, 46.
The state's cumulative count of cases rose to 506,011.
Dillaha said all the deaths reported Friday happened within the past month.
She said 7.7% of the state's coronavirus tests were positive during the seven-day span ending Thursday, up from the 7.6% initially reported for the week ending Wednesday.
Hutchinson has said he wants to keep the percentage below 10%.
The number of people who have ever been hospitalized in the state with covid-19 grew Friday by 50, to 27,159.
The number who have ever been on a ventilator rose by eight, to 2,844.
VACCINATIONS UP
At 6,986, the number of vaccine doses that providers reported administering was larger by 28 than the one the previous Friday.
After falling the previous seven days, the average number of doses administered each day over a rolling seven-day period rose to 5,799.
Of the most recently reported shots, 46% were third doses, including booster shots of the Pfizer vaccine for people who received their second dose at least six months ago.
First doses, including the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine, accounted for 26% of the increase. Second doses of Pfizer and Moderna made up 28%.
According to the CDC, the number of Arkansans who had received at least one vaccine dose grew Friday by 1,785, to 1,707,765, representing about 56.6% of the population.
The number who had been fully vaccinated rose by 2,072, to 1,408,814, or about 46.7% of the population.
Among the states and D.C., Arkansas continued to rank 37th in the percentage of its population who had received at least one vaccine dose.
In the percentage who were fully vaccinated, it remained roughly tied with Tennessee for 43rd, ahead of Louisiana, North Dakota, Mississippi, Alabama, Wyoming, Idaho and West Virginia.
Nationally, 65.8% of people had received at least one dose, while 56.8% were fully vaccinated.
Information for this article was contributed by Stephen Simpson of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.