The number of people hospitalized with covid-19 in Arkansas fell Friday for the second day in a row, while the number of coronavirus patients who were on ventilators fell for the third-straight day.
The count of state cases rose by 2,129, an increase that was smaller by more than 700 than the one the previous Friday.
The state death toll from the virus, as tracked by the Department of Health, rose by 19, to 7,022.
"Our COVID numbers are better than last Friday," Gov. Asa Hutchinson said in a tweet.
"After holidays, we often see a spike in cases and hospitalizations. As we go into the Labor Day weekend, let's make sure we protect ourselves and our community to prevent another spike."
Also on Friday, the Stuttgart School District announced the first virus-related shift to virtual instruction affecting an entire school since the start of classes at most public schools last month.
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Classes at Meekins Middle School, which serves the fifth and sixth grades, will be held remotely on Tuesday and Wednesday.
As of Friday morning, 100 of the school's 220 students had either tested positive for the virus or were in quarantine, according to a state database.
"Students will continue being educated by our teachers via online interactions and/or assignment packets sent home with the students," Stuttgart Superintendent Rick Gales said Friday.
"All of our students have school-provided technology that is utilized daily."
The number of covid-19 patients in the Arkansas hospitals fell Friday by 47, to 1,243.
The number was down by 216 from its all time high on Aug. 16 and by 128 from its peak in January during the winter surge.
The number of covid-19 patients on ventilators fell by two, to 353.
After rising Thursday, the number in intensive care fell by seven, to 527.
The number of intensive-care beds that were unoccupied statewide, however, fell by two, to 17, as a result of a drop in the total number of ICU beds.
Covid-19 patients made up about 48% of all patients in intensive care both Thursday and Friday.
INSTRUCTIONAL SHIFTS
Despite record numbers this week of active cases among students and employees in public elementary and secondary schools, only a few shifts to remote instruction have been reported so far.
The Augusta School District released students early on Friday over coronavirus concerns.
Superintendent Cathy Tanner said this week that the district would conduct "extensive cleaning" and discuss "what we can do better as a staff to prevent the spread of COVID, quarantining of students, and communicating with parents."
The Stuttgart district said that it will use Meekins Middle School's remote learning days next week to complete contact tracing, conduct deep cleaning of the building and make changes to guard against future outbreaks.
It has classified the days as alternative-methods-of-instruction days that won't have to be made up later.
Coronavirus concerns also prompted the Brinkley School District to notify the state Department of Education on Friday that a kindergarten class was shifting to home instruction until Sept. 13.
The Augusta, Stuttgart and Brinkley districts all have requirements for students and employees to wear masks.
In the 24-hour period ending at 3 p.m. Friday, the Little Rock School District, which also has a mask requirement, reported that 11 students had tested positive and 36 students and one employee had been required to quarantine after being near an infected person.
Over the past seven days, it said 59 students and six staff members had tested positive, and 281 students and five employees had been required to quarantine.
The quarantines included 183 that resulted from close contacts on campus with an infected person. The remaining quarantines were a result of contacts that occurred off-campus.
UA CASES
The University of Arkansas, Fayetteville saw a steep dip in the rate of growth for its active coronavirus infections over a two-day period that ended Thursday, according to university data.
Cases increased by about 3%, rising to 199 from 193 two days previously.
Earlier in the week, UA had seen a 37% rate of growth when cases jumped to 193 from 141 over a two-day period that ended Tuesday.
But data published Friday by the university also showed 40 on-campus virus tests with results still pending.
Out of 174 on-campus tests done Wednesday and Thursday with results complete, 18, or 10.3%, were positive.
Over the same time period, UA received 20 self-reported positive results.
The increase reported on UA's website Friday reflects new cases reported as well as infections now considered by UA to be "recoveries" because 10 days have passed since the positive test date.
The total of 199 active cases included 185 student infections, nine staff members infected and four faculty members with the virus, as well as one graduate assistant.
NEW CASES DECLINE
Friday's increase in cases was the first one in four days that was smaller than the one a week earlier, resuming a trend in new cases that has been mostly downward since Aug. 7.
The average daily increase in the state case count over a rolling seven-day period fell to 1,990, the first time it had been below 2,000 since the week ending Aug. 3.
With recoveries and deaths outpacing new cases, the number of cases considered active fell by 84, to 22,993.
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Jennifer Dillaha, the Health Department's chief medical officer, said she was encouraged by the decline in new cases, covid-19 patients in hospitals and on ventilators, and lower number of deaths compared with recent days.
"That paints a picture of perhaps we are beginning to move in the right direction, but we are waiting to see what happens after Labor Day weekend and the schools have a chance to be in session longer," she said.
While new cases overall have been trending downward, they've continued to increase among children, she said.
Although Arkansans age 17 and younger make up about 23% of the population, cases among that age group accounted for 36% of the new cases on Friday.
Similarly, 32% of the cases that were active as of Friday were among children and teenagers 18 and younger, who account for about 26% of the state's population.
Earlier in the pandemic, cases were less common among children than other age groups.
For instance, as of Jan. 4, just 12% of the active cases were among Arkansans age 17 and younger.
Dillaha said this week that children and teenagers are especially vulnerable because those under 12 are not yet eligible to be vaccinated, and the vaccination rate among those age 12-18 is still low.
The predominance of the highly transmissible delta variant also increases the chances of students being infected in school, especially if safeguards such as mask-wearing aren't in place.
Dillaha said more children are being hospitalized with covid-19 now compared with earlier in the pandemic, although they remain less likely to be hospitalized than adults.
"The other concern is, we don't yet know the rate of long-term complications or symptoms from covid-19," Dillaha said.
"Of course, we know they can occur even among children with mild illness that don't go in the hospital, so those are some of the questions we have in terms of understanding the illness in this population."
Over the holiday weekend, she said she recommends that people, whether vaccinated or not, wear masks and practice social distancing when they are near people from other households, "especially in indoor settings or places where the ventilation is poor."
In an online video, Joe Thompson, CEO of the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement and former Arkansas surgeon general, warned that Arkansas is "in the middle of a huge surge of the delta variant of covid-19."
"This is a new virus unlike its parent," Thompson said.
"It's more infectious. It's more deadly, and it affects younger and younger people.
"If you've not become protected through vaccination, I urge you to protect yourself. Do not circulate with large numbers of people, and get vaccinated as soon as possible."
HOSPITALIZED PATIENTS
Although down from their all-time highs, both the number of covid-19 patients in intensive care and on ventilators on Friday remained well above the levels they reached in January.
At its 11 hospitals around the state, Baptist Health had 279 covid-19 patients on Friday, down from a high of 300 on Aug. 22.
The patients on Friday included 146 in intensive care and 95 on ventilators, spokeswoman Cara Wade reported.
"Out of all of our hospitalized patients with COVID, 85 percent are not fully vaccinated," Wade said.
Hospitals in Washington and Benton counties had 134 covid-19 patients on Friday, down from 152 a day earlier and an all-time high of 173 on Aug. 11, Martine Pollard, a spokeswoman for Mercy Hospital Northwest Arkansas in Rogers, said in a statement.
After tying on Thursday the all-time high set on Aug. 20, the total number of patients, including non-covid-19 patients, in the northwest hospitals' intensive care units fell Friday by 13, to 126.
"We have been consistently caring for 100+ ICU critical care patients since mid-July," Pollard said.
STATE RANKINGS
According to rankings on Friday from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Arkansas continued to have the country's 11th-highest number of new cases per capita over a rolling seven-day period.
Arkansas' number of new deaths per capita continued to be the second-highest, behind Louisiana's.
Within Arkansas, Pulaski County had the most new cases on Friday, 157, followed by Washington County, which had 129, and Sebastian County, which had 116.
The state's cumulative count of cases rose to 460,363.
Dillaha said all the deaths reported on Friday happened within the past month.
She said 12.6% of coronavirus tests were positive in the seven-day span ending Thursday, down slightly from the 12.8% that was initially reported for the week ending Wednesday and a recent high of 16.3% the week ending Aug. 4.
Hutchinson has said he wants to keep the percentage below 10%.
The number of people who have ever been hospitalized in Arkansas with covid-19 grew Friday by 67, to 24,360.
The number of state virus patients who have ever been on a ventilator rose by 10, to 2,467.
VACCINATIONS UP
At 11,728, the increase in vaccine doses that providers reported having administered, including second and third doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, was larger by 549 than the one the previous Friday.
The average number of doses administered each day over a rolling seven-day period rose to 10,530.
That was down from the previous week, when one of the daily increases included the delayed reporting of doses that were given earlier, as well as from a previous recent high of 12,950 doses a day that were reported the week ending Aug. 9.
According to the CDC, the number of Arkansans who had received at least one dose rose Friday by 4,428, to 1,619,513, representing about 53.7% of the population.
The number of fully vaccinated rose by 6,678, to 1,274,641, or about 42.2% of the population.
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 of its fully vaccinated residents, it moved from No. 43 to being essentially tied with Tennessee for having the 42nd-highest rate, ahead of Georgia, Louisiana, North Dakota, West Virginia, Idaho, Mississippi, Wyoming and Alabama.
Nationally, 62.2% of people had received at least one vaccine dose, and 52.9% had been fully vaccinated.
Information for this article was contributed by Jaime Adame of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.