Almost a year after Arkansas' first coronavirus case was identified, the spread of the virus in the state continued to show signs of slowing on Wednesday as the state count of cases rose by 317.
Already at its lowest level since early July, the number of people hospitalized in the state with covid-19 fell for the second day in a row.
The state death toll from the virus rose by 25, to 5,382.
"Today's report shows fewer new cases and higher testing than last week," Gov. Asa Hutchinson said in a statement.
"Of the 25 new deaths reported today, 16 of them are late reporting from January. The team at the Department of Health and I are continually monitoring vaccine distribution to ensure we can administer doses as quickly and efficiently as possible."
Hutchinson is scheduled to hold a news conference on coronavirus response efforts today -- coinciding with the anniversary of the first identified state case -- in Pine Bluff.
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Wednesday's was the second daily case increase in a row that was smaller than the one a week earlier.
Over a rolling seven-day period, the average number of cases added each day fell from 348 as of Tuesday to 335 as of Wednesday.
That was the lowest average daily increase over a seven-day span since June.
The number of people hospitalized in the state with covid-19 fell by 16, to 301.
After dipping Tuesday, the number of those patients who were on ventilators rose by one, to 72.
The number of patients who were in intensive care units as of 2 p.m. fell by eight, to 128.
State Epidemiologist Jennifer Dillaha said she was pleased to see the drop in hospitalizations and that the number of new cases was "still pretty low."
The percentage of the state's coronavirus tests that are positive has also remained low, she said.
For both polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, and antigen tests during the seven-day span ending Tuesday, it was 3.8%, the same percentage the department reported as of a day earlier.
By comparison, the rate was above 10% for all of December and January, reaching a high of 18.9% during the seven-day span that ended Jan. 2.
Dillaha has said she suspects that the slowdown in new cases is due to the growing number of people who have immunity after being vaccinated or recovering from an infection, as well as "the possibility that covid-19 may have some seasonality to it like influenza."
"The fact that it was a new disease in humans when it first arrived, we wouldn't expect it to exhibit seasonality because no one had immunity, but it could be that as the covid-19 illness becomes more endemic in humans, we may see a seasonal pattern," she said.
With a few exceptions, the state's daily case increases have continued trending downward even after Hutchinson on Feb. 26 lifted most of the Health Department's directives aimed at slowing the spread of the virus.
Dillaha said it's still too early to determine the effect of the lifted restrictions on the state's case numbers.
"I think we would begin to see it [by now], but it might take a few weeks," she said.
"Since the cases were low, the first two or three generations of transmission may not really have large numbers of cases."
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MORE VISITS ALLOWED
Also on Wednesday, the head of an association representing Arkansas nursing homes praised the release of federal rules allowing for expanded visitation at such facilities and greater contact between visitors and vaccinated residents.
"I would say for the majority of our facilities, this should have a large impact," said Rachel Bunch, executive director of the Arkansas Health Care Association.
Previously, rules issued by the federal Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services had prohibited routine, indoor visits at nursing homes where a resident or staff member had tested positive in the previous 14 days.
A revised version of the rules released Wednesday calls for visitation to be suspended and facilitywide testing to be conducted once a new case is discovered.
If the testing doesn't turn up cases in areas beyond where the initial one was found, then visitation can resume in those other areas.
If the testing reveals cases in other areas, however, visits throughout the facility should remain suspended while the facility continues testing residents and staff members every three to seven days. Visits can then resume once 14 days have passed since the last positive test result.
The revised rules also allow residents who have been fully vaccinated to have close contact, including touch, with visitors "while wearing a well-fitting face mask and performing hand-hygiene before and after."
The previous version of the rules had called for residents and visitors to maintain 6 feet of separation.
The change "translates to holding hands, to hugging with the patient and their families," Bunch said.
"That is so exciting to us, and we want to see more of that as fast as we can. It's long overdue."
DOSES REPORTED
According to the Health Department, providers participating in the vaccination effort coordinated by the state had received 1,162,330 doses of vaccine as of Wednesday morning, up by 3,700 from the total as of a day earlier.
The doses the providers reported having administered, including booster shots, rose by 12,129, to 709,581.
In addition, Walmart, Walgreens, CVS and Community Pharmacy Enhanced Services Network pharmacies had been allotted 135,550 doses through federal programs, a number that hadn't changed since Friday.
The doses those providers reported having administered rose by 2,696, to 62,295.
The actual number of shots given is higher than the Health Department's figures because providers have three days to report inoculations.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of Arkansans who had received at least one vaccine dose rose Wednesday by 11,938, to 513,591, representing about 17% of the state's population.
The number who had been fully vaccinated, meaning they had received two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine or one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, rose by 5,469, to 285,284, or about 9.5% of the state population.
Among the states and the District of Columbia, Arkansas ranked 45th in the percentage of its residents who had received at least one dose and 39th in the percentage who had been fully vaccinated.
Nationally, 18.8% of the population had received at least one vaccine dose and 9.9% had been fully vaccinated.
Within Arkansas, the percentage of residents age 16 and older who had received at least one vaccine dose ranged from 24.3% in Dallas County to 5.1% in Miller County, where many residents have received shots in Texas that aren't reflected in Arkansas' figures.
Among Arkansas' most populous counties, the rate was 21.9% in Pulaski County, 14.7% in Benton County, 17.6% in Washington County, 13.3% in Sebastian County, 21% in Faulkner and Saline counties, 22.4% in Craighead County and 24.5% in Garland County.
ACTIVE CASES FALL
The cases that were added to state tallies Wednesday included 192 that were confirmed through PCR tests.
The other 125 were "probable" cases, which include those identified through antigen tests.
The state's cumulative count of cases rose to 325,700.
That comprised 256,269 confirmed cases and 69,431 probable ones.
Already at its lowest level since June, the number of cases that were considered active fell by 234, to 3,227, as 526 Arkansans were newly classified as having recovered.
Pulaski County had the largest number of new cases, 43, followed by Benton County, which had 33; Washington County, which had 27; Union County, which had 18; and Faulkner County, which had 17.
Among prison and jail inmates, the Health Department's count of cases rose by one.
Department of Corrections spokeswoman Cindy Murphy said the Ouachita River Unit in Malvern had two new cases Wednesday, and the Grimes Unit near Newport had one.
The Malvern lockup had 42 cases that were active as of Wednesday, and the Grimes Unit had two.
(Because of differences in timing on reporting and data entry, the Corrections Department's numbers often differ from the Health Department's.)
The state death toll rose by 11, to 4,332 among confirmed cases and by 14, to 1,050, among probable cases.
Among nursing home and assisted living facility residents, the state's count of virus deaths rose by four, to 2,009.
The number of people who have ever been hospitalized in the state with the virus grew by nine, to 14,977.
The number of state virus patients who have ever been on a ventilator rose by two, to 1,538.