The weekly supply of covid-19 vaccine available to Arkansans age 70 and older and employees of schools and child care centers was set to increase by more than 50% next week after state officials began redistributing surplus doses that had originally been designated for workers and residents of long-term care facilities.
State Epidemiologist Jennifer Dillaha said Friday that the doses include 17,000 of the Moderna vaccine that were initially allocated to Walgreens for long-term care facilities under a federal program.
An additional 23,000 doses of the same vaccine were to be redistributed from Arkansas pharmacies serving long-term care facilities to two hospitals and several drugstores around the state.
Because each patient must receive two doses, one month apart, the combined 40,000 doses are enough to vaccinate 20,000 Arkansans.
That's in addition to the doses of the Moderna vaccine and the one developed by Pfizer and BioNTech that the state will receive next week as part of its weekly allocation from the federal government.
Those are expected to include enough to provide the initial doses to about 37,125 people -- the same amount the state received this week -- as well as booster shots for people who received the initial dose earlier.
Dillaha said the state had also identified about 12,000 surplus doses that had originally been allocated to CVS as part of the federal program.
Plans for those were "still in the works" as of Friday, she said.
The Walgreens doses will be available to Arkansans age 70 and older at company stores around the state starting Monday, she said.
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Arkansas Department of Health spokesman Gavin Lesnick said a list of the sites would be posted on the department's website, healthy.arkansas.gov, today.
State officials "really worked hard this week to identify places that had unused doses so we could be sure and use them," Dillaha said.
"I think they'll all get used up this next week," she said.
"It's exciting because that means there's a bunch of people that are going to be vaccinated, which is nice because so many people want to be vaccinated, and we just haven't been getting very much vaccine each week into Arkansas."
Even though the redistribution is just a "one-off deal," she said, "at least we're able to do something to meet the demand."
NEW CASES SLOW
The vaccine developments occurred as the spread of the virus in the state once again showed signs of slowing.
After a week-to-week uptick in new cases the previous two days, the state's count of cases rose by 2,162.
That was 962 fewer cases than were added a week earlier on Jan. 15.
Despite the downturn, however, the state death toll from the virus, as tracked by the Health Department, rose by 53, to 4,549.
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It was the first time deaths had risen by more than 50 for three days in a row.
"Today's report shows a decrease of nearly 1,000 new cases compared to the same day last week," Gov. Asa Hutchinson said in a statement.
"There were also over 16,500 tests administered yesterday. If we can keep our new cases on the decline, then our deaths will reduce as well, and this is one goal we can all unite behind."
The death toll rose by 55 on both Wednesday and Thursday.
Of the 53 deaths reported Friday, one happened in mid-December and the rest occurred within the past month, Lesnick said.
The number of covid-19 patients in the state who were hospitalized, on ventilators and in intensive care all continued falling.
The number hospitalized fell for the third-straight day, dropping by 18, to 1,142.
After falling by 17 on Thursday, the number of patients on ventilators fell Friday by two, to 193.
The number of virus patients in intensive care units as of 2 p.m. fell by six, to 364 -- the fifth-straight day that number had declined.
All three measures have mostly fallen since they peaked earlier this month. The number hospitalized, for instance, reached a high of 1,371 on Jan. 11.
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Friday was the first time in three days that the daily increase in cases was smaller than the one a week earlier.
After rising for two days, the average number of cases added over a rolling seven-day period fell by 137, to 1,964.
That marked a new low since the average increase peaked at 3,086 on Jan. 10.
It was the first time the measure had dropped below 2,000 since Dec. 31.
After rising Thursday, the number of cases that were considered active fell Friday by 511, to 20,107, as 2,620 Arkansans were newly classified as having recovered.
VACCINE PLANS
Along with health care workers and first responders, residents and workers at nursing homes and other long-term care facilities fall under Phase 1-A of the state's vaccination plan, making them the first Arkansans to become eligible for the vaccines.
But state officials said this week that they overestimated the number of doses the facilities would need.
Rachel Bunch, executive director of the Arkansas Health Care Association, which represents nursing homes, said this week that the state allotted vaccines to all of the facilities based on their licensed beds, then added half that amount at each facility to cover the staff.
But she said the occupancy rate in the facilities had dropped to an unusually low level, in part because of covid-19 deaths and a reduction in people getting elective surgical procedures and needing rehabilitation afterward.
Under the federal program, Walgreens and CVS were allocated 49,400 doses, of which 6,982 had been administered as of Friday.
The number administered was up four from the total a day earlier.
Of the 23,000 doses that were being redistributed from long-term care pharmacies, 8,000 on Friday went to UAMS Medical Center in Little Rock and 5,000 were set to go to Baptist Health Medical Center-North Little Rock.
Dillaha said both hospitals had plans to administer shots at outreach clinics.
The remaining 10,000 doses were to go to pharmacies in counties where less than 4% of the population had been vaccinated or that had a large number of people age 70 and older.
The counties with low vaccination numbers were Jefferson, Crittenden, Hempstead, Lincoln, Miller, Polk, Benton, Carroll, Phillips, Prairie and Mississippi.
Pulaski, Garland, Faulkner, Baxter, White and Crawford counties were chosen for their populations of people age 70 and over.
UAMS CLINIC
From Tuesday through Friday morning, UAMS gave shots to more than 900 people at a clinic at the Freeway Medical Tower in Little Rock for employees of elementary and secondary schools, higher-education institutions and child care centers, all of whom officially became eligible for the shots this week.
Those groups fall under Phase 1-B of the vaccination plan.
Front-line "essential workers," such as factory and grocery workers, also fall under Phase 1-B but won't be eligible for shots until later.
UAMS spokesman Leslie Taylor said the clinic planned to administer 300 more shots by the end of the day Friday.
When it began taking appointments for the clinic at the end of last week, so many people called that the campus phone system crashed within about 30 minutes.
The university stopped taking appointments altogether on Sunday, Taylor said, after more than 3,000 people signed up, with the appointments for first and second doses stretching into at least mid-February.
"We wanted to make sure that we had staffing but also we wanted to make sure that we had vaccine," Taylor said.
"We didn't want to over-promise."
She said the university is hoping to begin taking appointments again early next week as well as to add weekend hours.
In addition to the people vaccinated at the clinic, she said UAMS gave shots to 200 people this week at mobile clinics at Philander Smith College and the University of Arkansas System offices, both in Little Rock.
Next week, she said UAMS is planning clinics at the Mena School District and the UA Cooperative Extension Service offices in Little Rock, where some University of Arkansas at Little Rock employees will be able to get shots.
UNIVERSITY EMPLOYEES
In Jonesboro, 1,085 covid-19 vaccinations were administered over three days for Arkansas State University workers, a spokesman said Friday.
"I think it is accurate to say that we have provided a vaccination this week to every employee who wanted one from us," ASU spokesman Bill Smith said in an email.
Smith earlier in the week said the university reached out to roughly 2,300 workers to offer a chance to receive the first dose of covid-19 vaccine on campus. The vaccine requires two doses administered weeks apart.
While 1,136 workers responded to an ASU form, when contacted for appointments some "were unable to receive a vaccination for medical reasons or found a vaccination elsewhere," Smith said.
"Going forward, we have our second dose clinics set up," Smith said, but he added that ASU is "not planning another large-scale event."
Workers at ASU this week received the vaccine at First National Bank Arena, with dozens of volunteers helping out Tuesday in day and night sessions. Vaccines were administered Sunday and Friday, Smith said. The university partnered with "local pharmacies" to provide the vaccine to employees, Smith has said.
But last week, a cache of covid-19 vaccine did not arrive as expected in advance of the ASU event, according to emails from Chancellor Kelly Damphousse, with some workers temporarily put on a "wait list." Smith on Tuesday said that assistance from the Health Department made it possible to host the large-scale mass vaccination event Tuesday.
Monday marked the first day that teachers and staff members at all colleges in the state were eligible to receive the vaccine, along with other priority groups decided upon by state officials.
The University of Arkansas, Fayetteville vaccinated some workers Wednesday and announced that today it would hold an appointment-only mass vaccination event. But some other large colleges said this week that a lack of available vaccine prevented any on-campus vaccination events for now.
DOSES ADMINISTERED
Statewide, pharmacies and other providers outside the federal long-term care program reported administering 14,704 doses of the vaccine between Thursday morning and Friday morning.
That raised the total doses they had administered to 193,831 -- 58.3% of the 332,250 doses they had received.
The doses received and administered include booster shots for people who already received their first shot.
The actual number of shots given is higher than the Health Department's figures because providers have three days to report the information.
At Coker Hampton Drug Co. & Gift Shop in Stuttgart, owner James Bethea said his store was flooded with calls from around the state after Hutchinson announced last week that the new groups that would become eligible for the shots this week.
With a supply of just 100 doses a week to provide initial shots, and hundreds of people on a waiting list, he said he limits appointments to people who live in the county.
"If I'm getting vaccine allocated based on my population, and I get a dose here, and I give it to someone in Bella Vista, then that's somebody in my county that's not going to get it," he said.
CASES BY COUNTY
The cases added Friday included 1,494 that were confirmed through polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, tests.
The other 668 were "probable" cases, which include those identified through less-sensitive antigen tests.
The state's cumulative count of cases rose to 281,382.
That comprised 225,737 confirmed cases and 55,645 probable ones.
Pulaski County had the largest number of new cases, 286, followed by Washington County, which had 158; Benton County, which had 115; Sebastian County, which had 111; and Pope County, which had 103.
Among prison and jail inmates, the Health Department's count of cases rose by three.
The death toll rose by 34, to 3,723, among confirmed cases and by 19, to 826, among probable cases.
Among nursing-home and assisted-living facility residents, virus deaths grew by 15, to 1,809.
The number of people who have ever been hospitalized in the state with the virus rose by 75, to 13,130.
The number of virus patients who have ever been on a ventilator rose by four, to 1,383.
Information for this article was contributed by Jaime Adame of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
