Author: kaarnold

Schools are reflecting on what’s happened since the start of Covid- 19 Pandemic and prepare for yet another new variant, Omicron. They tell us how they have responded so far and what they plan to do. While there was an increase in cases in the overall cases in the month of August for Washington County, there were a total of 5,916 New Cases, there has also been an increase in the number of individuals vaccinated. Washington County is currently at 50.8% vaccinated.

Gathering data from Arkansas Department of Health to see how the Covid-19 vaccines have impacted the amount of Covid-19 cases since the start of this school year. We will be looking at three main variables which include; New Cases Today, Positive Cases, and Vaccine data to see the progress being made.

 We reached out to two local University’s and a High School to see how they are managing the affects. We are analyzing data on the 15^th of every month.  Two of the schools are in Washington County and on August 15, 2021 there were 104 new cases reported. September 15, 2021 there were 148, October 15, 2021 there were 41, and November 15,^, 2021 there were 6 new cases reported. As you can see from this information, the amount of Covid cases are slowly starting to fall within Washington County.

As for New Covid Vaccines does given, we have data on the entire state. On August 15, 2021 there were 6,388, September 15, 2021 7,557 new doses, October 15, 2021 there were 6,986 given and on November 15, 2021 there were 2,769 new doses given. The visuals below will allow you to better compare the data.  

The first school is University of Arkansas which is located in Fayetteville, AR and apart of Washington County. We were able to get in contact with Zachary Brown, Assistant Director of Communications for the Pat Walker Health Center. We asked when they saw a peak in active cases for the school and Brown responded with, “it essentially started increasing around August 23^rd which was the first day of school and peaked a couple weeks after Labor Day. Then it’s subsided down and has been stable ever since.” University of Arkansas is also the only school that we interviewed that does offer their students incentives if they do get fully vaccinated.

The second school is Harber High School located in Springdale, AR and apart of Washington County as well. We talked to Tommy Deffebaugh, Physical Education Teacher and Head Men’s Basketball Coach. Coach Deffebaugh is passionate about his students and takes pride in the efforts made to support them. We asked how their cases were affected in August and he said, “The number of cases kind of started going back up again. Masks weren’t mandatory and still are not mandatory. Right now, I think vaccinations are going up and a lot of students are getting vaccinated.” We then followed up by asking if sports were any different for them. His response to that was, “We had to take pictures of the benches so we knew where kids were sitting and always had some type of seating chart.” This is referring to the teas benches and how they had to set them up with a gap between to meet guidelines during season.

In our data, we are comparing the number of individuals vaccinated in Arkansas to the amount of Positive COVID cases. We took a look at the year 2021 and gathered data from January 2021 through October 25, 2021 across the entire state of Arkansas. 

January: 278,539 New Doses given and 65,826 Positive COVID Cases. 

February: 320,175 New Doses given and 25,921 Positive COVID Cases. 

March: 515,159 New Doses given and 7,889 Positive COVID Cases

April: 568,093 New Doses given and 5,116 Positive COVID Cases. 

May: 268,480 New Doses given and 5,413 Positive COVID Cases

June:154,863 New Doses given and 7,935 Positive COVID Cases

July: 210,834 New Doses given and 36,367 Positive COVID Cases

August: 351,556 New Doses given and 64,455 Positive COVID Cases

September: 212,281 New Doses given and 40,296 Positive COVID Cases

October:162,214 New Doses given and 13,472 Positive COVID Cases

As we can see from the data, right after the holidays in January we had the biggest spike in Positive COVID Cases for the year 2021. The next big spike came in July into August right as many were going back to school and finishing up summer travel. Now, Positive COVID Cases are slowly decreasing but will be interesting to see what happens as we go into the holidays again. In December 2020 the Delta Variant also emerged in the U.S. which most likely lead to the spike in January 2021.

Analyzing the Data in correlation with New Doses given, April had the highest amount of doses given and also had the lowest amount of Positive COVID Cases in the month. With that being said, we can conclude that receiving vaccines does help in the number of COVID cases and would be in our best interest to continue to get them to protect our community. Right around this time in April the vaccine became available to more individuals which is why it could have increased so dramatically. 

COVID 19, what we thought was just an extra week added onto our spring break in March of 2020 is still affecting us drastically. Not only did it extend from just an extra week but it is now October 2021, 19 months later and we are continuing to have spikes in cases. We have been through major shutdowns where only essential businesses have been open and now we are slowly opening back up with some businesses still mandating masks. 

On October 4th, 2021 The Arkansas Democrat- Gazette posted a 4 minute podcast. Within this podcast they started it out by talking about the COVID cases finally falling below 10,000. Not only is this a big milestone but they fear that some individuals may not get vaccinated because it is going down. Another thing to prepare for would be the fact that during the winter there is typically a higher amount of sickness.

Alyssa Arnold, a local Registered Nurse at Willow Creek Women’s Hospital and now a Travel Nurse agreed with our data when she said, “We saw a pretty good spike when the delta variant hit but now the cases have continued to decrease.”  Arnold works in the Labor and Delivery Department and we wondered how cases have been among pregnant women.  Arnold said, “When the delta variant surfaced a few months ago we definitely saw an increase in the cases. While it is recommended for pregnant women to receive that vaccine many are skeptical, and rightly so… Over the last few weeks, it seems as if we have been seeing a decrease in cases though and I think this is due to more women getting vaccinated during their third trimester.” 

Rebecca, an ICU Nurse was asked how she has seen cases be affected since the increase in the vaccination rate. She said, “We saw an initial decrease in cases after the vaccine became available to the public but then there was another surge. I work in an intensive care unit and over 90% of patients admitted to the icu in the past 6 months have been unvaccinated, and that number holds true nationwide.”  We asked Rebecca if she thought there would continue to be a spike in COVID cases every few months? She said, “Probably. I think we will likely have a spike in cases after the holidays, and there are some new variants circulating that could cause problems. I’m not an epidemiologist, though – it’s important to understand that while nurses are respected health professionals, we don’t have the answers to questions like this. Any insight I can offer is purely anecdotal and we should be looking to scientists who specialize in community health and epidemiology for authoritative information.”

The final individual interviewed is Page Newberry, Family Practice APRN at NWA Family Medicine and Obstetrics. We first asked, from your best knowledge on COVID, do you think there will continue to be a spike in COVID cases every few months? Newberry said, “I think they will occasionally spike. Usually after large gatherings, social events, Christmas time, and spring break time. After we take precautions, I think there will be an occasional spike but I don’t think it will be anything like the beginning of the pandemic.” The final question asked was, April had the highest amount of New Doses and also the lowest amount of Positive COVID cases. Do you think those have a correlation to each other? She said, “I think that’s a direct correlation and not a coincidence just due to the large amount of people getting vaccinated. I think that’s just proof that vaccines aren’t perfect but they do work.”

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