The winter storm that hit Arkansas caused delays in coronavirus vaccinations and testing Thursday as the state's daily case increases and hospitalizations continued trending downward.
The state's count of cases rose Thursday by 1,103, the sixth daily increase in a row that was smaller than the one a week earlier.
Already at its lowest level since early November, the number of patients hospitalized in the state with covid-19 fell by 23, to 712.
The state's death toll from the virus, as tracked by the Department of Health, rose by 25, to 5,199.
"For the second day in a row, we see a decrease of over 50% in new cases from last week," Gov. Asa Hutchinson said in a statement.
"Vaccine administration has progressed throughout the state, with an increase of over 94,000 since last week. We must continue doing our part in this fight."
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Thursday was the fourth day in a row that the number of virus patients in state hospitals had dropped.
After increasing Wednesday, the numbers of those patients on ventilators and in intensive care units both fell Thursday.
The number of covid-19 patients on ventilators fell by 21, to 117, while the number in intensive care as of 2 p.m. fell by 28, to 254.
Meanwhile, icy roads in much of the state caused some vaccination clinics and appointments that had been scheduled for Thursday or later this week to be postponed.
The weather also caused 37 of the Health Department's 94 local health units to close.
The ones that were open were not offering polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, testing, because a courier service used to get the samples to the department's laboratory in Little Rock was not operating.
Antigen testing, which doesn't require a laboratory, was available at open health units for patients with symptoms, department spokeswoman Danyelle McNeill said.
Also Thursday, a rush of people seeking to book appointments this week at Walmart pharmacies for covid-19 vaccinations overwhelmed the company's scheduling website the day before the retailer was scheduled to begin administering the shots in Arkansas and 21 other states as part of a federal program.
"The Walmart scheduling system is currently experiencing technical difficulties following a surge of appointments," a company spokeswoman said Thursday.
"Our team is working to resolve the matter and is bringing it back online."
Walmart didn't expect the problem to affect the vaccination effort's startup today, the spokeswoman said.
The online scheduler for Sam's Club, Walmart's members-only warehouse division, also succumbed to the high volume of traffic to the site. It's not necessary to be a member to get vaccinated at a Sam's Club pharmacy, but nonmembers do have to create a free "guest account."
Walmart is one of 21 companies taking part in the Federal Retail Pharmacy Program, which aims to increase access to the vaccine nationwide.
The Bentonville-based retailer already offered the shots at some stores in 17 states, including Arkansas, as part of state vaccination programs.
In Arkansas, however, the federal program was set to greatly increase the number of stores where the vaccine is available.
Hutchinson said Tuesday that the program would make at least 11,600 doses a week available at 58 Walmarts around the state.
By comparison, the Health Department listed only five Walmart stores as offering the vaccine under the state's program.
The state had allocated those stores enough vaccine this week to provide initial doses to 700 people.
State Epidemiologist Jennifer Dillaha said she continued to be encouraged by the state's drop in hospitalizations and its active-case total.
That number fell by 672, to 13,518, as 1,750 Arkansans were newly classified as being recovered.
"The testing was good, too," she said, with 11,617 PCR tests and 1,470 antigen tests reported to have been performed Wednesday on Arkansans.
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That was down, however, from the 12,782 PCR tests and 2,068 antigen tests that were reported a week earlier.
Dillaha said the icy weather could further slow the rate of infection by keeping more people home.
But, she added, "I'm a little bit worried about our homeless population" because of the potential for the virus to spread in shelters.
"Any population that the cold would actually maybe promote crowding or congregation in a certain setting, then it could increase the risk for spread," she said.
APPOINTMENTS RESET
At St. Bernards Medical Center in Jonesboro, the winter storm caused the rescheduling of vaccinations that had been planned for Thursday and this morning at an auditorium where the hospital has been giving the shots to school employees and Arkansans age 70 and older.
"We're still keeping everybody on the books, but we're not vaccinating today," hospital spokesman Mitchell Nail said Thursday.
"We're going to try to do tomorrow, but we won't start until noon."
He said the hospital tentatively was planning to open the clinic Sunday to vaccinate people who had been scheduled for Monday, when another storm is forecast to arrive.
"With us vaccinating this 70-and-plus category, we have a lot of elderly individuals who don't drive well altogether, let alone when you factor in something like wintry weather, and so our main objective right now is to get them vaccinated safely," Nail said.
"We want to make sure that we have the service open to them, but we also want to keep them safe and don't want any injuries or accidents."
The hospital has administered about 10,000 doses at the auditorium since the clinic opened last month, he said.
Generators that Lelan Stice took to his Doctor's Orders Pharmacy in Star City on Wednesday evening allowed a vaccination clinic that had been planned for about 100 people Thursday to go forward, even when the power went out.
But he said clinics that had been planned for Thursday and today at the chain's Pine Bluff store were rescheduled for next week.
A clinic at a high school arena in West Memphis, where Doctor's Orders, along with another pharmacy and a clinic, were scheduled to administer shots to 1,000 people today was moved to Feb. 20.
Rescheduling the appointments is "somewhat difficult," Stice said.
"A lot of these patients, they're not on the internet where we can notify them on Facebook or that sort of thing, so we have to call them and reschedule them one at a time," he said.
Officials in Garland County earlier this week rescheduled a drive-thru vaccination clinic for 1,000 people ages 70 and older at the county fairgrounds from Tuesday of next week to Feb. 19.
"We knew that it was going to be very, very cold, and any precipitation that fell on Monday or Tuesday was gong to be an issue," said Bo Robertson, director of the county's Department of Emergency Management.
He said he was keeping an eye on the weather to see if the event would need to be rescheduled again.
"The weather has not been very favorable, and it hasn't wanted to cooperate with our plans," he said.
Leslie Taylor, a spokeswoman for the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, said a vaccination clinic that the university had planned at Philander Smith College in Little Rock was rescheduled because the campus was closed Thursday.
UAMS' public vaccination clinic at the Freeway Medical Tower in Little Rock remained open, however.
"We did have some people call to reschedule their appointments, but many of them were able to delay the appointment by a few hours and come on in today," Taylor said in an email.
She added that more than 100 staff members, "including front-line caregivers, our groundskeepers, housekeeping, police, IT spent the night at UAMS or nearby hotels Wednesday night to ensure that we had the staff and services needed on Thursday."
She said some UAMS clinics around the state were closed Thursday, but the covid-19 testing site at the main campus in Little Rock was open.
"Volumes were lower today, but we still had several patients come in to be tested," Taylor said.
She said UAMS has administered more than 22,000 vaccinations, including 6,100 to non-employees.
Little Rock-based Baptist Health system didn't cancel its vaccination clinics, "though we strongly encouraged our patients who had appointments to stay safe and reschedule for another day," spokeswoman Cara Wade said in a text message.
She said the health system has administered 35,261 doses of vaccine, including 6,000 to school employees, 8,000 to people age 70 and older, and 1,200 doses to people who work in law enforcement.
Except for the Doctor's Orders Pharmacy in Star City, Arkansas Pharmacists Association Chief Executive Officer John Vinson said he hadn't heard of any pharmacies that had lost power because of the storm.
"We were concerned that there might be shipping delays, but so far every pharmacy that was supposed to receive vaccine has received it," Vinson said.
Chris Durney, a spokesman for the Central Arkansas Veterans Health Care System, said all of the system's clinics remained open Thursday as the system announced that it had administered its 10,000 doses of the vaccine.
The doses administered as of Thursday included 4,700 initial shots and 2,000 booster shots to veterans and 4,100 doses, including 2,000 booster shots, to employees.
The system is operating on a schedule that differs from the state program's.
In addition to veterans age 70 and older, those who are on dialysis, undergoing chemotherapy, have spinal cord injuries or have had a transplant are now eligible for shots from the veterans health care system.
"Our vaccination team is contacting Veterans to schedule their shots," the system said in a news release.
"CAVHS is also accepting a limited number of priority group walk-ins to our Little Rock and North Little Rock vaccination clinics."
Under the state program, Arkansans now eligible for the vaccine include health care workers, residents and employees of long-term-care facilities, first-responders, people age 70 and older, and school and child-care center employees.
DOSES REPORTED
According to the Health Department, pharmacies and other providers participating in the vaccination effort being coordinated by the state had received 621,075 doses of vaccine as of Thursday morning, an increase of 19,000 doses from the total as of a day earlier.
They reported having administered 420,570 of those, up 15,875 from the number as of a day earlier.
In addition, Walgreens and CVS reported having administering 21,564 doses, an increase of 386 from the number as of a day earlier.
The two pharmacy chains were allocated 49,400 doses of the Moderna vaccine for residents and workers in Arkansas long-term-care facilities as part of a federal program.
They have since made some of the doses available to eligible members of the broader public after it was discovered that they had more than they needed to cover the facilities.
The number of doses reported to have been delivered and administered includes some booster shots.
The actual number of shots given is higher than the Health Department's figures because providers have three days to report the doses they administer.
On its website, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 316,972 Arkansans, or about 10.5% of the state's population, had received at least one dose of the vaccine as of Thursday.
That was an increase of 5,633 people from the number the agency reported a day earlier.
The number of Arkansans who had received two doses rose by 7,082, to 110,751, representing about 3.7% of the state's population.
Among the states and District of Columbia, Arkansas ranked 16th in the percentage of its population that had received at least one dose.
A day earlier, it had ranked No. 15.
But the state moved from No. 21 to No. 19 in the percentage of its population that has received two doses.
CASES BY COUNTY
The cases added to the state's tallies Thursday included 724 that were confirmed through PCR tests.
The other 379 were "probable" cases, which include those identified through antigen tests.
The state's cumulative count of cases rose to 311,043.
Pulaski County had the largest number of new cases, 178, followed by Benton County with 90; Washington County with 60; Saline County with 57; and Sebastian County with 52.
Among prison and jail inmates, the Health Department's count of cases rose by two.
Department of Corrections spokeswoman Cindy Murphy said the Randall Williams Unit in Pine Bluff, the Southwest Arkansas Community Correction Center in Texarkana and the Wrightsville Unit each had one inmate who had newly tested positive.
The number of cases at those prisons that were active as of Thursday ranged from five at the Texarkana lockup to two at the Randall Williams Unit.
The state's death toll rose by 21, to 4,165 among confirmed cases and by four, to 1,034 among probable cases.
Among nursing home and assisted-living facility residents, the state's count of virus deaths rose by eight, to 1,981.
The number of people who have ever been hospitalized in the state with covid-19 grew by 44, to 14,255.
The number of the state's virus patients who have ever been on a ventilator with covid-19 rose by two, to 1,471.
Information for this article was contributed by Serenah McKay of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
