Author: jbj020

COVID-19 cases are on the rise in Arkansas as the holiday season gets into full swing, with the Arkansas Department of Health reporting 6,585 active cases in the state Friday.

Active cases dipped below 10,000 at the beginning of October and have yet to exceed that point, but the holiday season is still reporting an upward trajectory, according to ArkansasCovid.com analysis of ADH data. 

Healthcare workers are concerned that this winter will be a repeat of last season’s fatally high COVID-19 numbers, which peaked in Jan. 2021 with 27,822 concurrent active cases and NUMBER deaths from December through February, according to ADH data. 

One Arkansas healthcare worker said the end of the year is weighing on medical staff. Jason Rutledge, a home health nurse in Searcy who often works with post-hospitalization COVID-19 patients, noted that providers are stretched thin dealing with the pandemic atop regular difficulties.

“It’s just hard this time of year when lots of people are already getting sick for cold and flu season, and then you’ve got Covid on top of it,” Rutledge said. He added that Arkansas’ low vaccination rates and lack of safety precautions are further compounding the issue.

“It’s like when everyone was starting to get vaccinated, they just acted like it was over. I see patients pretty much every day that are miserable from long Covid, so let me tell you, it ain’t over,” Rutledge said.

Vaccinations in the state have reached 51.2 percent for individuals five and older, another 11.6 percent are partially immunized, according to the ADH. Healthcare workers have administered nearly 320,000 booster doses.

The death toll of COVID-19 is up to 8,693, an increase of more than 300 since Nov. 1. In 2021, 5,023 Arkansans have died from COVID-19, compared to 3,676 in 2020, according to ADH data.

COVID-19 is hitting small Arkansas communities hard as less populous counties report higher per-capita case rates than populous areas.

Pulaski county and Washington county consistently lead the state in total cases, but as of Oct. 28, the 10 counties with the most cases per capita each have a total population of less than 40,000, according to ArkansasCovid.com analysis of Arkansas Department of Health data. 

Jackson county leads the rest with 69.1 active cases per 10,000 residents, compared to the statewide average of 16.4 cases per 10,000 Arkansans.

Case totals have fallen significantly since the surge at the end of summer 2021, but healthcare workers in Arkansas are still facing difficulties from staffing shortages.

One nurse in the northeast region of the state, Elizabeth Lemke, said conditions were so bad she had to leave the medical field indefinitely.

In spring 2020, nursing didn’t require too much additional work to deal with the struggles of COVID-19, Lemke said in a phone interview. “But then so many people quit. But now you’re doing the job with a little extra with three people’s jobs…You can’t safely take care of anyone like that,” Lemke said.

After she quit, Lemke received calls from several medical facilities around the state looking to hire more nursing staff. “People were calling me from places I never applied to just cause I had a license,” Lemke said. “They’re going on the national registry and searching people that will come to work.”

The highly infectious delta variant is still spreading around the state despite a downward trend in cases, and the most cases-per-capita are being reported in Arkansas’ rural areas.

The ‘everybody knows each other’ charm of small towns drives the spread of the virus, according to Joshua Johnson, a recovering COVID-19 patient and resident of Mississippi county. 

“If someone goes to work with COVID, they might spread it to five or six people, easily,” Johnson said in a phone interview. “And then they all go home and spread it to whoever they live with. And when everybody knows everybody, that spread is going to repeat itself across the neighborhood.”

Johnson said his case was traced back to a coworker who wasn’t showing symptoms when they were in contact, but tested positive for the virus days later.

“I see a lot of the same people every day, like just from around town and work, so if any one of us is contagious, it has a chance to spread across the whole community,” Johnson said.

The total death toll of COVID-19 in Arkansas recently exceeded 8,000 people, according to ADH data. The CDC continues to recommend booster shots as an effective means of protection against the virus. Specific guidelines for individuals seeking a booster shot are available at the department of health’s website.

Check out the Pandora Papers – this story isn’t getting enough coverage in my opinion.