An uptick in Arkansas' new coronavirus cases continued on Wednesday even as the number of people hospitalized in the state with the virus fell back to its lowest level in almost a week.
The state's death toll from the virus, as tracked by the Arkansas Department of Health, rose by one, to 11,410.
The state's count of cases rose by 244 -- the second daily increase in a row that topped 200.
While smaller by 15 than the increase on Tuesday, it was larger by 18 than the one the previous Wednesday.
After rising the previous two days, however, the number hospitalized fell 14, to 50, the largest one-day drop in more than a month.
"I think it speaks to the different point that we're in with the pandemic," State Epidemiologist Mike Cima said.
"While we're still seeing breakthrough infections or reinfections or what have you, there's a lot of immunity out there, some baseline immunity out there, that may be keeping folks out of the hospital.
"We know that vaccines obviously are very effective at doing that, especially among those who have received the booster."
Since Tuesday, just over half of the state's active cases, representing people who have tested positive and are potentially still infectious, have been among people who are fully vaccinated, according to the Health Department's online coronavirus dashboard.
The percentage rose slightly from 50.3% as of Tuesday to 50.7% on Wednesday.
The dashboard doesn't indicate how many of the cases were among people who had received booster doses.
Since Feb. 1, 2021, 72.3% of the state's cases, 79.7% of its hospitalizations from covid-19 and 77.4% of its deaths from the virus have been among people who were not fully vaccinated, according to the dashboard.
In addition to vaccines, Cima said treatments such as Pfizer's Paxlovid pill are "really effective at keeping people out of the hospital if administered early in an infection."
While the state's new cases have been trending upward, the average number of covid-19 deaths reported each day has declined.
Over the seven days ending Wednesday, a total of seven deaths were reported, the lowest weekly total since the week ending May 19, 2020.
In 2021, the smallest number of deaths reported in a week was eight the week ending June 2.
ACTIVE CASES RISE
Already at its highest level since the week ending March 28, the average daily increase in the state's case count over a rolling seven-day period rose Wednesday to 197.
With new cases outnumbering recoveries, the number of cases that were considered active grew by 63, to 2,119, the largest total since March 13.
After rising by one on Tuesday, the number of the state's virus patients who were on ventilators remained at 12.
The number in intensive care, which rose by four on Tuesday, fell Wednesday by three, to 20.
At its hospitals in Little Rock and Springdale, Arkansas Children's had five covid-19 patients on Wednesday, up from three on Tuesday, spokeswoman Hilary DeMillo said.
CASES BY COUNTY
Pulaski County had the most new cases, 54, on Wednesday, followed by Benton County with 36, Craighead County with 20 and Washington County with 17.
The state's cumulative count of cases since March 2020 rose to 837,719.
The Health Department's tally of vaccine doses that had been administered rose by 2,003, which was larger by more than 400 than the daily increase a week earlier.
Almost half the most recent increase was from doses classified on the Health Department dashboard as not having an "available dose number."
That's how the department is listing second booster doses, which were authorized in March for people who are 50 or older or have compromised immune systems.
The count of doses for people receiving the vaccine for the first time rose by 416, which was up by 75 compared to the increase in first doses a week earlier.
Growing for the second day in a row, the average number of total doses administered each day over a rolling seven-day period rose to 1,361, which was still down from an average of more than 1,500 a day the previous week.
The average for first doses rose to 310.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the percentage of Arkansans who had received at least one dose remained Wednesday at 66.8%, and the percentage who had been fully vaccinated remained at 54.5%.
The percentage of those fully vaccinated who had received a booster dose remained at 39.8%.
Among the states and District of Columbia, Arkansas continued to rank 37th in the percentage of its residents who had received at least one dose.
In the percentage who were fully vaccinated, it continued to rank 47th, ahead of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Wyoming.
Nationally, 77.8% of people had received at least one dose, and 66.3% were fully vaccinated.
Of the fully vaccinated population nationally, 46.1% had received a booster dose.