Category: Student_Work

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.

By Caroline Sellers 

Nov. 30, 2021

Arkansascovid.com

Arkansas public school districts experienced a substantial decline in active COVID-19 cases for the month of November, with only 705 cases reported by the Arkansas Department of Health on Nov. 29. 

The ADH reported an 860 decrease in active cases for the state’s public schools from Oct. 7 to Nov. 29. The report shows that Arkansas’s public schools had 1,565 active cases for both faculty and students on Oct. 7 and 705 active cases for Nov. 29.

The Nov. 29 ADH report also shows an increase in both faculty and student total COVID-19 cases from the month of October to November. The state’s public school districts had a 1,025 increase for total faculty cases from Oct. 7 to Nov. 29, according to the ADH report. The public school districts had a 4,955 increase for total student cases from Oct. 7 to Nov. 29, also according to the report.

Dr. Janice Warren, Assistant Superintendent for Equity and Pupil Services for the Pulaski County Special School District, says that the district follows COVID-19 policies religiously. 

The Pulaski County Special School District currently ranks ninth in terms of cumulative COVID-19 cases for both faculty and students with 459 cases reported by the ADH on Nov. 29.
“Any adult who enters our buildings, whether it is staff, visitors, vendors, they have to answer our online portal which has our COVID questions that ask things like have you been exposed to anybody,” Warren said.

The Pulaski County Special School District requires students to wear masks and tries to maintain 6-foot social distancing whenever possible, Warren said. 

“We do encourage vaccinations for children that are eligible. We have had vaccination clinics in our schools for those students. We have had them at all of our middle schools and all of our high schools, so we highly encourage them,” Warren said. 
Warren also explained that the school district does not require faculty to be vaccinated but they do encourage it and have even put incentives in place. She said that faculty who have been vaccinated will receive a $200 incentive check.

Ouachita School District, a smaller district than the Pulaski County Special School District, also has used preventive measures, according to Dr. Lisa Kissire, the district’s Director of Curriculum and Instruction. 

Dr. Kissire said that Ouachita School District had low active cases last year at both the elementary school and high school. She also explained that the district followed quarantine after exposure, wore masks at all times and maintained 6-foot social distancing when possible.

“Last year we would go to school Monday and Tuesday and then we would skip Wednesday which was a virtual day for us and we would fog the classrooms during that time. We would then go to school Thursday and Friday and fog again Friday afternoon,” Kissire said. “I think those things really helped us.”

Kissire said she believes the district has a low population of eligible children who have been vaccinated.

“We have a high percentage of faculty who have been vaccinated,” Kissire said. “But we are much lower, I would say, in the student population. We tried to do a vaccine clinic, we had one person that signed up.”

She explained that the school district wants to keep children in school if possible. One of the policies implemented to try and drive quarantine numbers down in the district is a four-day school week, according to Kissire. She said that students and faculty go to school Monday through Thursday and the classrooms are fogged Friday.

Another policy that was put in place to drive down quarantine numbers is that if two people are both masked and one person ends up testing positive for COVID-19, that other person does not have to quarantine unless symptoms arise, Kissire explained. She also explained that this policy would be risky if the majority of people in the district quarantining were getting sick, but that is not the case.

“We want to drive down those quarantine numbers and keep them in school and we can do that with masks. We have not gone that route yet but we have sent a letter to parents to say if this continues to be the trend, we are looking at a mask mandate to keep kids in school. Our number one goal is to educate them and to keep them healthy,” Kissire said.

Since the beginning of COVID-19, public schools have felt the strong force of the virus. High schools lost the ability to teach in-person during the 2019 and 2020 school year, provide their students with extracurricular activities, and give their students a real and full high school experience. Now that kids above the age of 12 are now eligible, with 5 to 11 year olds soon to be on that list to receive a vaccine, there is hope that a return to a new normal is on the horizon.

Suki Highers, sociology teacher at Fayetteville High School and Justice of the Peace for Washington County District 11, has experienced COVID-19 firsthand, with her whole family having the virus despite being vaccinated. Highers understands and reinforces the importance of mask wearing at school every day.

“While some students seem to be very conscious about COVID precautions, as a whole, most don’t seem to care,” Highers said. “Every day I have to remind students how to wear a mask appropriately, sometimes multiple times in one class period. It is easy to tell who hasn’t been impacted by COVID in the classroom.”

Fayetteville High School has a mask mandate and quarantine policy, along with Little Rock School District. Little Rock is the second largest school district in the state. Two weeks ago, Rogers and Fort Smith School Districts lifted their mask mandate, although mask wearing is “strongly encouraged.” The largest school district in the state, Springdale School District, ended their mask mandate back in September.

The districts without a mask mandate have comparably larger case numbers per 100 staff and students cumulative totals compared to Fayetteville. From calculations made with November 29 data provided by the Arkansas Department of Health, Springdale had 33.22 student cases per 1,000 cases, Rogers with 36.86, and Fort Smith with 38.88. while Fayetteville had 17.24 student cases per 1,000 and Little Rock with 18.12. Fayetteville and Little Rock’s numbers are almost cut in half compared to school districts without a mask mandate.

The common theme between Springdale, Rogers and Fort Smith is that there is no mask mandate, which can be seen as the cause for higher case numbers.

If the school district does not openly show support for the vaccination of their students, then the students will not care about getting the vaccine or their chance of getting COVID.

Linda Stocker, Science teacher at Fayetteville High School, worries that the schools are not informing their students about the vaccine and its importance to fight COVID-19.

“The school held a vaccine clinic, but no information was disseminated to students about the vaccine prior to the clinic,” Stocker said.

If there is not enough information being spread and taught to students at school or at home, there might not be enough will for them to do it on their own. Resources need to be present at school, a place where students generally have free and equal access to the things they may not have at home.

“Students from families whose first language is not English, or students from families where the guardians or parents are not home due to things like working night shifts,” Stocker said, “Do not have equitable access to vaccine information compared to students who speak English and have parents who are informing them about the vaccine.”

School districts like Fayetteville, Springdale, Rogers, and Little Rock need to set an example for the smaller school districts that do not have a fraction of the resources compared to larger school districts. Vaccinated student and staff numbers need to go up in order for case numbers to go down.

“I’m not sure cases are as low as what has been reported,” Highers said. “Many students won’t get tested for fear of being quarantined.”

It is a scary thought to think you might have COVID, but getting tested and being quarantined if you are positive is how we stop the spread and prevent cases from rising.

Masks are a simple and effective way to reduce the spread of COVID-19 and that has been the case since the virus first came to the United States. With case numbers and deaths from COVID rising each day, it is disheartening that mask-wearing has lost its importance to some people.

“Our school board has been very COVID conscious, but I believe that the mandate will be lifted this school year if case numbers remain low,” Highers said. “While it would be a relief to stop policing masks, I would worry about bringing it home again.”

Suki Highers – suki.highers@g.fayar.net

Linda Stocker – linda.stocker@g.fayar.net

One year after a winter that featured the worst peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, health officials are concerned rising cases and a worse influenza season could strain hospital resources.

U.S. flu season ocurrs in the fall and winter, peaking December-February, the same time period in which record-high cases of COVID-19 overwhelmed hospitals across Arkansas and the country last winter. 

At that same time, Arkansas experienced flu numbers far below previous years’. Throughout most of the 2020-21 flu season, the percentage of outpatient hospital visits in Arkansas for influenza-like illness (ILI) hovered around the off-season baseline, according to ADH data. Throughout the past five years, that rate has averaged a peak of more than 6% in mid-February, but in February 2021 it was at the off-season baseline level of less than 1%.

This was likely because fewer students were in school and more people were staying home and masking up in public, said Dr. Jennifer Dillaha, ADH chief medical officer and medical director for immunizations and outbreak response. Uncharacteristic flu spikes in spring and summer 2021, when mask requirements were lifting and more people returning to their normal lives, support this hypothesis, Dilaha said.

But this year, with mask mandates nearly nonexistent and thousands more children in school, hospital visits for ILI and school absentee rates are on the rise. Both measures, which can help indicate the extent of seasonal respiratory virus spread, are meeting or exceeding past years’ averages most weeks.

“(The) average, you know, that kind of varies from year to year,” Dillaha said. “But we’ll have a real flu season this year, as opposed to last year.”

With COVID-19 cases also on the rise — active cases in Arkansas have risen 51% since hitting a trough Nov. 9 — Dillaha worries that coronavirus, flu, and other seasonal viruses like respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), could put many Arkansans in the hospital once again, she said.

“It would definitely add to increased stress on our hospital systems,” Dillaha said. “And that is one of my concerns for this winter. A lower number of COVID cases, but influenza could potentially make up the difference in a high level of hospitalizations again. We know that the flu puts a lot of people in the hospital.”

Dillaha will be watching pediatric respiratory illness caseloads especially closely, she said. The delta variant of the coronavirus affects children more severely than any previous variant. Children are also the group most likely to get severely ill from RSV, and along with the elderly are the group most impacted by severe flu, Dillaha said.

“Flu and RSV and COVID in children, the main hospital that would be taking care of them is Arkansas Children’s,” DIllaha said. “And we have limited capacity for handling small pediatric cases, small children in Arkansas. Fortunately, the severe COVID cases are a little bit older. But even if the hospital is full of flu and RSV, then it does present a problem for small children who need the specialty care or being put on the ventilator.”

Dr. Jessica Snowden, division chief for pediatric infectious diseases at Arkansas Children’s Hospital, said the past year and ½ of the pandemic has shown the hospital’s doctors, nurses and staff they can adapt to anything, and they are prepared for surging hospitalizations they might face this winter. The team is staying vigilant and preparing contingency plans, expecting to see more flu admissions during the season’s peak. she said. Meanwhile, baseline COVID-19 admissions are still higher than they were before the delta surge. 

“So far, knock on wood, we aren’t seeing a ton of flu, but we are seeing a lot of other viral illnesses co-infected with COVID-19 that make kids much more sick than either one alone do. Like RSV  or like human metapneumovirus…which is an RSV-like virus. And so we’re seeing a lot of really significant respiratory ailments, because they’ve got both of them at the same time. And it speaks to the importance of making sure we’re protecting from everything that we can.”

Dr. Amanda Novack is the medical director of infection prevention at Baptist Health, the state’s largest healthcare system. Novack said Baptist’s locations had almost no flu admissions last winter, although COVID-19 hit the system hard. She and her team are anticipating more flu hospitalizations this year.

“This pandemic has taught a lot of humility, and nobody knows the future,” Novack said. “But I think we would be foolish to not be prepared for a possible surge. Even if COVID is under control, you know, without anyone being exposed to flu last year, that kind of background immunity that every flu season adds to the community, we didn’t have that.”

Like Snowden, Novack feels confident her home-base hospital in Little Rock, stocked with ample ventilators and with several difficult COVID surges under its belt, is prepared for the winter.

Still, an influx of severely ill patients would be hard on a staff already exhausted from the pandemic and stretched thin by a nursing shortage affecting the entire U.S., she said. Novack wishes more people would wear masks in public, get vaccinated against COVID-19 and influenza and stay home from school or work when sick with any virus, she said.

“We’ve known for decades that wearing masks helps prevent the spread of respiratory viruses. But I think that, take the politics and the controversy out of it — if an individual wants to protect themselves then a mask is a great way to do that. And vaccinations also have become controversial, even though from a medical, scientific standpoint, they are not controversial, it is a no brainer. If you have an injection that can prevent you from getting sick with a virus, then that’s clearly better than getting sick with the virus.”

Dillaha and Snowden agreed, saying that getting vaccinated, masking and avoiding others when ill are the best ways for adults and children to stay out of the hospital and live healthy, normal lives this season.

“I’m hearing from organizations that are requiring vaccines that they are getting pushback from their employees about the flu vaccine,” Dillaha said. “So I think some of (the COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy) has carried over, and I hope that people will use this as an opportunity to learn more about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines so that they can make well-informed decisions.”

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.

The emergence of the Omnicron variant and the new wave of COVID cases have piqued citizens’ interest in vaccinations and booster shots–particularly vaccinated individuals that originally received the Johnson and Johnson vaccination. 

Dr. Anthony Fauci announced the Omnicron variant’s arrival to the United States yesterday via someone traveling from South Africa to Florida. The person was vaccinated but did not have a booster. The Omnicron variant contains mutations that could increase the virus’ transmissibility, which highlights the importance of vaccinations and booster shots, Fauci said. 

Since the booster shot became available in November, vaccinations increased 11.

“The data did show that the Janssen vaccine, or the Johnson and Johnson vaccine as most people refer to it, is not as effective,” said Dr. Christopher Cooper, the Director of Operations for Heartland Pharmacies. 

The University of Arkansas provided students with free vaccines at the onset of the vaccine rollout last spring. However, the university mostly provided students with the Janssen vaccine.

Sophia Ultes, a sophomore, and Audra Maxwell, who recently graduated, both received the Johnson and Johnson vaccine through Pat Walker Health Center at the University of Arkansas last spring. Ultes recently received the Moderna booster shot.

“I wanted to get the booster because I had the Johnson and Johnson, so I didn’t know how effective that was going to be after such a long time period,” Ultes said.

The Janssen vaccine itself is not the cause for speculation, rather its single-dose administration, Cooper explained.

“Where we really see improvement is with a second dose or when it comes to your immune system, that reintroduction,” Cooper said. “The first vaccine doses just provide initial protection, but reintroducing that into your immune system for a second time increases your immune response.”

The Johnson and Johnson vaccine concerned Maxwell, too, but she struggled to get time off of work to get a booster shot. She recently recovered from COVID for the second time, however, her first infection occurred months before vaccine distribution, Maxwell said. Though she had been vaccinated, she still had symptoms.

“I had a fever,” Maxwell said. “I did lose my taste and smell, but that was more towards the middle of my quarantine.” Her symptoms were not serious enough to require hospitalization, she explained.

Vaccines are not completely infallible, however, the vaccines are not meant to make individuals immune to the virus, Cooper explained.

“The goal with a vaccine and with this pandemic is to minimize hospitalizations and Covid-19 related deaths,” Cooper said. “There is a small chance that individuals may become infected after receiving either a two-dose regimen of a vaccine or even after receiving their booster…But the severity of that infection should be greatly diminished. Your likelihood of having to be hospitalized is greatly decreased, and your likelihood of mortality is also significantly decreased.”

Vaccine side-effects, such as arm soreness, tenderness at the injection site and common cold-like symptoms are normal, but they are not signs to worry, Cooper said.

The vaccine is not actually causing those symptoms, rather your immune system is recognizing the antigen, and “basically flaring up to try to boost that immune response,” Cooper explained.

Third doses, or booster shots, are now available for individuals 18 and older in Arkansas if six months have passed since receiving a second mRNA vaccine dose or two months have passed since receiving the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, Cooper said.