Arkansas' second covid-19 case caused by the fast-spreading omicron variant was confirmed Wednesday, state health officials said, as Arkansas' death toll from the coronavirus topped 9,000.
Meanwhile, the top scientist at a laboratory in Memphis said dozens more omicron cases that hadn't yet been publicly acknowledged by Arkansas officials have been identified in the Jonesboro area, where new coronavirus cases have skyrocketed this week.
"Omicron's been in the Jonesboro area for at least two weeks," William Budd, chief scientific officer with Compass Laboratory Services, said Wednesday.
The developments came as the total statewide count of coronavirus cases rose by 897, the first daily increase in six days that was smaller than the one a week earlier.
Dropping for the third day in a row, the number of people hospitalized in Arkansas with covid-19 fell by two, to 494.
The state's death toll from the virus, as tracked by the Department of Health, rose by 10, to 9,007.
"While we have been diligent in getting the vaccine to as many people as possible, regrettably we passed 9,000 deaths in AR to COVID today after another 10 were accounted for," Gov. Asa Hutchinson said in a tweet.
"This is a solemn reminder of the deadly virus we are fighting and how important it is to get vaccinated."
The state officials Friday publicly reported what they described as the state's confirmed omicron case, which they said resulted from community spread.
State Department of Health spokeswoman Danyelle McNeill said the second case was confirmed Wednesday and was likely travel-related.
Dr. Jennifer Dillaha, the Health Department's chief medical officer, said the person had recently been in southern Africa, where the omicron variant first emerged last month.
She declined to say what part of the state either of the two cases were in. Neither of the people who were infected have been hospitalized, she said.
Budd said his laboratory, which performs testing for several clinics in Arkansas, found four cases of omicron in the Jonesboro area about two weeks ago -- several days before Arkansas officials publicly reported the state's first case.
Initial results from polymerase chain reaction, or PCR tests, suggested the cases had been caused by omicron, and that suspicion was confirmed through genetic sequencing performed by another Memphis laboratory, Budd said.
Since then, he said, genetic sequencing has confirmed dozens more omicron cases from the Jonesboro area.
"At this point, it's probably about 75% of the cases from that region that we are testing," Budd said.
He said he sent an email to the Health Department about two weeks ago asking whom he should notify about the omicron cases, but hasn't received a response.
"I think the challenge that we have is there's not a great infrastructure in place to report in to the public health departments from local laboratories when they do identify stuff like this," he said.
He said the laboratory has also been reporting the cases to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a process that involves uploading the gene sequences to a database and takes about two weeks.
In response to questions from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Health Department spokeswoman Meg Mirivel said in an email Wednesday evening that the department had "not found any record of the lab reaching out to us about cases involving omicron."
She said the department's epidemiologists planned to try to contact the laboratory today.
Regardless of whether it's been confirmed, Dillaha said omicron is likely spreading in the Jonesboro area.
For the past two days, Craighead County, the state's seventh-largest by population, topped the list of counties with the most new cases, with 116 Tuesday and 145 Wednesday. Craighead County typically does not make the daily top-three county list.
As of Wednesday, it had 684 cases that were considered active, the largest total in the state besides the 776 in Pulaski County, which has a population more than three times as large.
Health Secretary Jose Romero said Tuesday that about 80% of the new cases in Craighead County were in Jonesboro, and about half were among people age 25-44.
Infections among people under age 18 made up another 19%, he said.
SURGE EXPECTED
Even before they publicly reported the state's first omicron case, Arkansas health officials said the variant was likely circulating in the state.
According to CDC estimates released Monday, omicron accounted for more than 73% of cases in the United States last week, including more than 92% of the cases in a region encompassing Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas.
The actual number of cases caused by the variant is unknown because only a portion of specimens from positive tests are sequenced to determine which strain caused the infection, and it can take weeks to get the results.
The variant, which scientists say is more transmissible than the previously dominant delta variant, has been blamed for a recent uptick in Arkansas' new cases.
The increase in cases Wednesday, however, was down from the 955 cases added a day earlier and a spike of more than 1,000 cases the previous Wednesday.
Dillaha said the downturn could be from more people using home tests and not reporting the results or from a general slowdown in testing ahead of the holiday weekend.
She said she doesn't expect the decline to last long.
"I think we'll start seeing an escalation next week and then even more after New Year's," she said.
Despite reports indicating omicron causes severe illness less often than the delta variant, she said she remained concerned that it could infect enough people to result in even more hospitalizations than the ones that occurred last winter or during the delta surge in the summer.
"I think there is the possibility that that could occur, and I think we need to get ready for it," Dillaha said.
For instance, she said health care workers should make sure they're vaccinated and get their booster shots, and hospitals "need to prioritize the services they provide."
"Hospitals in Arkansas have done an excellent job of optimizing the number of beds available in the two previous waves that we experienced, this last August and then last January, so they know what they need to do to get ready," she said.
In one indication of the virus's rapid spread, Dillaha said 9.2% of the state's coronavirus tests were positive during the seven-day span ending Tuesday, topping a previous recent high of 8.9% the week ending Dec. 2.
It was the highest percentage over a seven-day span since the week ending Sept. 15, when the state's new cases were declining from the peak of the delta surge.
Hutchinson has said he wants to keep the percentage below 10%.
ACTIVE CASES RISE
The average daily increase in the state's case count over a rolling seven-day period fell Wednesday to 775, which was still up from an average of 723 a day a week earlier.
With new cases outnumbering new recoveries and deaths, the number of cases in the state that were considered active rose by 391, to 7,962, which was still down from the two-month high of 8,485 reached Dec. 11.
The number of the state's virus patients who were on ventilators rose Wednesday for the second straight day, going from 96 as of Tuesday to 98.
The number who were in intensive care fell by three to 199.
The number of intensive care unit beds in the state's hospitals that were unoccupied rose by 23, to 98, with people with covid-19 continuing to make up about 19% of all the state's patients in intensive care.
After Craighead County, Pulaski County had the most new cases Wednesday with 114, followed by Benton County with 85.
The state's cumulative count of cases rose to 545,934.
The number of people who have ever been hospitalized in the state with covid-19 grew by 39, to 29,254.
The number of the state's virus patients who have ever been on ventilators with covid-19 rose by four, to 3,088.
DEATHS TOP 9,000
Arkansas' death toll from the coronavirus topped 9,000 about 2½ months after it rose above 8,000.
The state's first virus deaths were reported on March 24, 2020, less than two weeks after the first patient in the state tested positive.
The death toll rose past 1,000 on Sept. 15, 2,000 on Nov. 3, 3,000 on Dec. 15, 4,000 on Jan. 9, 5,000 on Feb. 4, 6,000 on July 19, 7,000 on Sept. 2 and 8,000 on Oct. 10, when 280 deaths were added to the count as part of a "data correction."
In all of last year, 3,676 deaths were reported, or about 13 a day from March 24 through the end of 2020.
The 5,331 deaths reported so far this year translates to a rate of about 15 a day.
According to a White House report, Arkansas' toll as of Monday translated to a rate of 298 deaths per 100,000 residents, the seventh-highest rate among the states after Mississippi, Alabama, New Jersey, Arizona, Louisiana and New York.
Dillaha noted Arkansas' count includes the deaths of people whose infections were confirmed through PCR tests, as well as those of "probable" cases, which include those identified through less-sensitive antigen tests or where no test was performed but covid-19 was listed as the cause of death on the death certificate.
Not all states include the deaths of probable cases in their death counts.
Dillaha said one of the 10 deaths in Arkansas reported Wednesday happened in September, and the rest occurred within the past month.
VACCINATIONS UP
In a break with a recent downward trend, the Health Department's tally of vaccine doses that had been administered rose Wednesday by 11,511, an increase that was larger by more than 1,400 than the one the previous Wednesday.
Booster shots made up 52% of the most recent increase.
The count of first doses rose by 3,791, which was larger by more than 1,200 than the increase in first doses a week earlier.
After falling a day earlier, the average number of total doses administered each day over a rolling seven-day period rose to 8,969, while the average for first doses rose to 2,818.
Both have mostly fallen since hitting three-month highs of more than 12,000 total doses a day and 3,600 first doses a day the week ending Dec. 9.
According to the CDC, 62.3% of Arkansans had received at least one dose as of Wednesday, up from 62.1% a day earlier.
The percentage who had been fully vaccinated rose from 50.8% as of Tuesday to 50.9%.
Of those who had been fully vaccinated, 28.7% had received booster doses as of Wednesday, up from 27.9% a day earlier.
Among the states and District of Columbia, Arkansas continued to rank 37th in the percentage of its population that had received at least one dose and 45th, ahead of Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Wyoming and Idaho, in the percentage that were fully vaccinated.
Nationally, 72.8% of people had received at least one dose, and 61.7% had been fully vaccinated.
Of the fully vaccinated population nationally, 30.8% had received booster doses.