Arkansas headline news free#

Three were treated with a machine called ECMO - short for extracorporeal membrane oxygenation - a step some consider a last resort after ventilators fail. But recently, four or five of them ended up in intensive care. Young, pregnant coronavirus patients were once rare at the hospital. “We didn’t see this degree of illness earlier in the epidemic.” “It’s really discouraging to see younger, sicker patients,” Dr. But some patients at the Little Rock hospital are in their 20s or 30s. The average age of a coronavirus patient in Arkansas has dropped by nearly a decade since December - from 63 to 54 - a reflection of the fact that three-fourths of older Arkansans are at least partly vaccinated. That almost certainly means no such requirements can be issued until late in 2023. In April, the state legislature added yet another roadblock, making it essentially illegal for any state or local entity, including public hospitals, to require coronavirus vaccination as a condition of education or employment until two years after the Food and Drug Administration fully licenses a shot. Statewide, only about 40 percent are vaccinated, Dr. Fourteen accepted shots.Įven health care workers have balked. Thousands gathered at the stadium in Little Rock to watch. The last mass vaccination event was May 4, when the Arkansas Travelers, a minor-league baseball team, had its first game since the pandemic hit.

Arkansas headline news free#

Ator, the vaccine coordinator, said door-knocking “would probably do more harm than good,” given residents’ suspicions of federal intentions.īoth said the Arkansas public had been saturated with vaccine promotions and incentives, including free lottery tickets, hunting and fishing licenses and stands offering shots at state parks and high school graduation ceremonies. Romero said Arkansas would happily accept more monoclonal antibody therapies, a Covid-19 treatment often used in outpatient settings. “This is going to sound very selfish but unfortunately it’s true: The fact that people won’t get vaccinated means I can’t go home and see my kids for dinner.”īut not all those tactics are welcome. Martin, the pulmonologist, who obsesses over her patients’ care. “I started having flashbacks, like PTSD,” said Dr. “I would say we have definitely hit the alarming stage,” he said.Īt Baxter Regional, many doctors and nurses are girding for another wave while still exhausted from battling the pandemic they thought had abated. It is spreading through the state’s unvaccinated population “at a very fast rate,” he said, and threatens to strain the ability of hospitals to cope. Mark Williams, the dean of the College of Public Health at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, said the Delta variant was upending his projections for the pandemic. “What I’m concerned about now is we’ll have a rise or surge,” he said, “then winter is going to add another surge, so we’re going to have a surge on top of a surge.”ĭr. Romero, the state health director, said he still believed enough Arkansans were vaccinated, or immune from having contracted Covid-19, that the “darkest days” of December and January were behind them.

For about one in three residents, he said, “I don’t think there’s a thing in the world we could do to get them to get vaccinated.”ĭr. “Boy, we’ve tried just about everything we can think of,” a retired National Guard colonel, Robert Ator, who runs the state’s vaccination effort, said in an interview. Only 44 percent of residents have received at least one shot. Overall, Arkansas ranks near the bottom of states in the share of population that is vaccinated.

Paxlovid Study: The Covid-19 medication Paxlovid reduced hospitalizations and deaths in older patients, but made no difference for patients under 65, new research from Israel found.

Boosters: An influential panel of expert advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended updated coronavirus booster shots to the vast majority of Americans, clearing the way for health workers to begin giving people the redesigned shots within days.The decline, largely driven by the pandemic, was particularly pronounced among Indigenous communities. Heavy Toll: The average life expectancy of Americans fell precipitously in 20.students: The math and reading scores of 9-year-olds dropped steeply, erasing two decades of progress. Educational Declines : Test results show the pandemic’s effect on U.S.