Seven Carroll County residents have died of complications related to COVID-19 in during August, bringing the local death toll attributed to the novel coronavirus to 115, according to a Aug. 26 report issued by the Arkansas Department of Health.
That report listed three additional deaths in the county, along with 914 others across the state, bringing the statewide death toll to 11,887.
While the number of deaths continue to creep upward, the number of active cases continues to trend downward, with 10,839 reported across the state.
Carroll County saw 35 new cases since Aug. 19, along with with 35 recoveries, but the three reported deaths left the active case count at 54, three fewer than on Aug. 19.
The state health department reported 6,197 new cases during the seven-day period ending Aug. 26, bring the total to 927,072 cases since the pandemic began, and 904,177 “recoveries,” meaning they are no longer being monitored by the health department.
In Carroll County, 6,754 cases have been diagnosed, with 6,585 reported recoveries.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Aug. 26 continued to rate Carroll County’s community transmission level in its weekly report at “low,” with a case rate of 105.71 per 100,000 — down from 126.85 — with new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 at 6.1 and 2.9 percent of staffed, inpatient beds in use by patients with confirmed COVID-19.
On the vaccination front, the state health department reported Aug. 26 the number of Arkansans aged 5 and older who are fully vaccinated had increased by 1,511 to 1,658,598 — a total of 150,559 since Jan. 1 — with another 288,723 listed as partially vaccinated and 820,678 listed as having received a third-dose booster.
Combined, those numbers represent approximately 68.5 percent of Arkansans aged 5 and older.
Countywide, the state health department reported 29,783 doses of the various vaccines had been administered by Jan. 1. As of Aug. 19, that number had increased to a reported 36,317 doses.
Approximately 54.3 percent of Carroll County residents aged 5 and older have been fully immunized and another 7.4 percent are partially immunized. Combined, those numbers represent approximately 61.7 percent of the county’s population that is eligible to receive a vaccine.
