Arkansas will likely turn down its entire weekly allocation of coronavirus vaccine from the federal government this week for the second week in a row as the state's providers work to use up their inventory, a state official said Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Arkansas posted its highest increase in coronavirus cases in about two weeks for the second day in a row Wednesday, with some of the cases stemming from an outbreak at the Faulkner County jail.
The state's count of cases rose by 298, a slightly larger increase than the one the day before and the previous Wednesday, April 28.
After rising by 20 Tuesday, the number of people hospitalized in the state with covid-19 fell by 11, to 181.
The number of virus patients who were on ventilators, however, rose by seven, to 35.
It was the first time that number had topped 30 since March 26.
The state's death toll from the virus, as tracked by the state Department of Health, rose by two, to 5,754.
"Our case numbers are similar to last week, continuing the trend we've seen for weeks," Gov. Asa Hutchinson said in a statement.
"While these numbers are lower than the first few months of this year, we can still work to lower them even further by getting vaccinated and encouraging your neighbors to do the same."
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Arkansas was allocated enough doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines for next week to provide initial doses to 77,860 people.
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That was up slightly from the 77,060 initial doses the state was allocated for this week.
The state's allocation of the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine fell from 6,700 for this week to 5,200 for next week.
However, state Epidemiologist Jennifer Dillaha said the state, which didn't order any vaccine doses for this week, has a large enough inventory of doses that it isn't planning to order any next week either.
Health Department figures indicated that providers participating in the state's vaccination program had 476,035 unused doses as of Wednesday, a decrease of 10,482 doses from the day before.
"We're making decisions week to week," Dillaha said.
"Our smallest allocation is the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, and so it could be that if we did order some, that would be the most likely vaccine that we would order."
Health Department spokeswoman Danyelle McNeill said 277,080 of the Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson doses that had been allocated to the state, including second doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines' two-dose regimens, had not yet been ordered as of Wednesday.
On Tuesday, President Joe Biden's administration told states that vaccine doses they chose not to order would become available to other states.
McNeill said Arkansas officials hadn't heard of any of the Arkansas' unordered doses being reallocated as of Wednesday.
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Instead of ordering new doses, the Health Department has been helping coordinate the transfers of doses among providers.
"We've moved some around, and there are places that they're monitoring their dose expiration, so we've been also addressing that -- moving [doses] around to make sure that vaccine that's going to expire gets used first," Dillaha said.
She said she hadn't heard of any vaccine that had expired before it could be used.
Walmart and CVS Health, which receive vaccine through a federal program, announced this week that they are offering vaccines on a walk-up basis at locations throughout the state.
That includes all 124 Walmart and Sam's Club pharmacies and 22 CVS locations.
CVS said no appointments are necessary, while Walmart said its pharmacies are "accepting walk-in vaccine appointments, as supply allows."
Both companies also allow customers to schedule vaccination appointments on their websites.
TRAVELERS GAME
To encourage more people to get the shots, state officials announced plans Tuesday to hold "pop-up clinics" at festivals, rodeos and other events around the state over the next several months.
The Health Department supplied 100 doses for one such clinic at the Arkansas Travelers' opening game Tuesday at Dickey-Stephens Park in North Little Rock, but it drew just 11 people who wanted the shots.
Mary Ann Mansfield, the Arkansas Medical Society's administrative services director, said she was "a little disappointed."
"The good news is that we talked to lots of people," asking them if they needed to get the vaccine, and "we all kind of felt like 85 to 90% of the people we talked to said they'd already been vaccinated," Mansfield said.
She said nurses from the Health Department and Little Rock Pediatric Clinic administered the shots at the clinic, set up in a grassy area behind the third base line and near the first-aid station, while four physicians from the Medical Society were on hand to answer questions.
At future clinics at the ballpark, "we'll just make sure that we're a little bit more visible with signage and trying to push people over there," Mansfield said.
Those clinics are scheduled for games on May 15 and 27, and June 20.
Travelers CEO Rusty Meeks said the Health Department and Medical Society approached him about two weeks ago about holding the clinics.
"It went well," he said of the one Tuesday. "We got a lot of good feedback on it."
STUDENT VACCINATIONS
In Jonesboro, St. Bernards Healthcare is offering Pfizer shots to students who sign up for the free sports health evaluations it's offering on May 15 at Arkansas State University's First National Bank Arena.
The shots are available to students who are at least 16 years old, currently the youngest age authorized by the federal government to receive the shots.
Those under age 18 must have consent forms signed by a parent or guardian.
Health system spokesman Mitchell Nail said similar annual events offering the health exams, which are required for participation in school sports, have typically drawn about 1,300 students, although that fell to about 800 students last year.
"We're hoping to get back to pre-COVID numbers this year," Nail said in a text message.
He said the health system is encouraging students who are old enough to get the shots.
"Obviously there are health issues, if a student contracts covid, to not only themselves but to members of their team as well as the opposing teams," Nail said in a phone interview.
A covid-19 diagnosis could also put a student "out of competition for a couple weeks as well, or more, so we want to make sure that students don't run into that scenario," Nail said.
If the shots are authorized next week for students age 12-15, as news reports have indicated is likely, Nail said the health system will evaluate whether to offer them to students in that age range at the event.
"We honestly would be happy to offer it to as many kids as possible," Nail said.
In the meantime, at the health system's weekly vaccination clinic in an auditorium near St. Bernards Medical Center demand for the shots "is falling off rather quickly," Nail said.
On Wednesday, the clinic gave 229 shots, more than half of which were second doses of Pfizer.
Last week, it gave 200 first doses and 390 second doses of the vaccine, Nail said.
"Our goal right now is to get through this month, the month of May, and then evaluate at the end of this month what our model will be going forward," he said.
For instance, that might entail offering the vaccine through outpatient medical clinics rather than holding weekly vaccination clinics in the auditorium, he said.
Statewide, the Health Department reported that the number of vaccine doses that had been administered, including second doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, rose Wednesday by 14,426.
That was almost 3,800 doses lower than the number the previous Wednesday.
The average number of doses administered per day over a rolling seven-day period fell to under 12,300, its lowest level since Feb. 25 and down from a peak of more than 23,000 during the week that ended April 7.
According to the CDC, the number of Arkansans who had received at least one vaccine dose rose Wednesday by 3,673, to 1,088,927, representing about 36.1% of the state's population.
The number who had been fully vaccinated rose by 7,502, to 803,294, or about 26.6% of the population.
Among the states and District of Columbia, Arkansas moved up from No. 44 to No. 43 in the percentage of its residents who had received at least one vaccine dose.
It continued to rank 46th in the percentage who had been fully vaccinated.
INMATES INFECTED
At the Faulkner County jail in Conway, sheriff's office Capt. Erinn Stone, the administrator, said all 93 inmates in the jail's unit for male misdemeanor offenders had tested positive.
She said a couple of the inmates started displaying symptoms late last week.
After the results for those inmates came back positive, the jail conducted mass testing, which turned up the other cases.
Two staff members also tested positive recently, including one who was recently released from isolation, she said.
Only three or four inmates had symptoms as of Wednesday, and none had been hospitalized, Stone said. No cases have been found among inmates in the jail's other units, she said.
"We're doing what we can, and trying to keep the spread out and the numbers down," Stone said.
She said new inmates at the jail are screened for symptoms and kept in a booking area for five to seven days before being moved to other areas of the jail.
Inmates who show symptoms while in the booking area are moved to negative-pressure cells within that area.
At least some of the covid-19 cases from the jail did not appear to have been classified by the Health Department as of Wednesday as coming from a correctional institution.
The department's numbers indicated that Faulkner County had 73 new cases, the most of any county, but that there was no increase in the statewide count of cases among prison and jail inmates.
SCHOOL CASES
Among students and employees at public school districts, the number of active cases fell by 21, to 320, between April 29 and Monday, according to Health Department reports.
On the other hand, the number of active cases increased by five, to 21, in private schools and by seven, to 92, on college and university campuses.
Fifteen public school districts had five or more active cases as of Monday, according to the Health Department's latest report on school cases, which was dated Monday but not posted to the department's website until Wednesday.
The Springdale School District, the state's largest by enrollment, topped the list with 28. The second-largest, Little Rock School District, followed with 25, and the Bentonville School District had 20.
The Russellville School District had 15 active cases. Cabot and Hamburg each had 13.
Districts with fewer than five cases are not identified by name by the Health Department as a way to protect the privacy of students and staff members. There were 149 cases collectively among the unidentified districts.
Among private schools, Shiloh Christian Schools based in Springdale had seven active cases. No other private school had more than four.
Harding University had the most active cases, 23, among colleges and universities, followed by the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, which had 10. ASU and Philander Smith College in Little Rock each had nine.
Since June 15, there have been 43,955 covid-19 cases among students and employees in the state's public schools, 2,350 cases in the private schools and 14,457 cases at the colleges and universities, according to the latest Health Department report.
AN UPWARD TREND
Since hitting a low for the year in early April, the state's average daily case increases have slowly been trending upward.
The increase Wednesday was the largest in one day since a spike of 352 on April 21.
Already at its highest level since late March, the average daily increase over a rolling-seven day period rose by one, to 210.
With new cases outpacing recoveries, the number of cases that were considered active rose by 109, to 2,152, its highest level since March 23.
"My concern is that we'll creep up until suddenly we'll accelerate," Dillaha said.
"I'm hoping that people will use this time of low spread to get vaccinated."
The cases that were added to the state's tallies Wednesday included 220 that were confirmed through polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, tests.
The other 78 were "probable" cases, which include those identified through less-sensitive antigen tests.
The state's cumulative count of cases rose to 336,760.
That comprised 263,630 confirmed cases and 73,130 probable ones.
After Faulkner County, Benton County had the most new cases, 29, followed by Washington County with 27.
The state's death toll rose by one, to 4,570, among confirmed cases and by one, to 1,184, among probable cases.
Among nursing home and assisted-living facility residents, the state's count of virus deaths rose by one, to 2,079.
The number of people who have ever been hospitalized in the state with covid-19 grew by 27, to 15,943.
The number of the state's virus patients who have ever been on ventilators with covid-19 rose by four, to 1,629.
Information for this article was contributed by Cynthia Howell of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.