Troubling COVID-19 Infection Rate Among Arkansas Schoolchildren Spikes; Biden To Boost Vaccination

Over a 14-day period, the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement (ACHI) reported a record 59 Arkansas public school districts with COVID-19 infection rates of 100 or more new known infections per 10,000 district inhabitants, according to the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement (ACHI).

New COVID-19 cases among schoolchildren in Arkansas continue to spike. (Photo: Springdale)

COVID-19 Infections in Arkansas School District

In a recently published article in Talk Business, COVID-19 infection rates of 50 or more new known illnesses per 10,000 district residents during a 14-day period are up from 188 in the previous week, according to ACHI. The data on the ACHI website is based on data received from the Arkansas Department of Health (ADH) on Monday.

ACHI President and CEO Dr. Joe Thompson said in a statement “We continue to see more communities exceed 1% of their population newly infected with COVID-19. These numbers reflect the risk in the communities from which students, teachers, and staff come each day.”

Furthermore, he is also urging the parents to get vaccinated to protect their children from infectious and deadly COVID-19. Thompson also stressed out that this is now the time to rethink over the rejection of the mask mandate and encouraging them to support the school board, according to a report published in KATV.

Read Also: Amid The Spike Of Delta Variant, Why Your Child Needs To Get Vaccinated?

Meanwhile, ACHI’s list of known infections includes both verified and suspected cases. The ADH determines probable cases based on verbal reporting and antigen test findings.

The ADH also recorded 2,481 additional cases on Thursday, increasing the total number of illnesses to 469,977. The number of active cases increased by 214 to 19,714, while the number of fatalities increased by 27 to 7,169. COVID patients on ventilators decreased by five to 315, and hospitalizations decreased by 15 to 1,194.

Biden To Boost Vaccination

President Joe Biden presented a broad strategy on Thursday that the White House believes would result in additional vaccines to fight the COVID-19 Delta variant’s summer spike in cases and fatalities. According to the Johns Hopkins University of Medicine, there have been 654,268 COVID fatalities in the United States, with 40.57 million cases. There have been 4.2 million new cases in the United States in the last 28 days, with 33,985 fatalities — or more than 1,213 deaths each day.

Since July, the number of job ads requiring immunization has increased by 90%. And they are certain that these criteria will be met. When Tyson Foods announced its mandate in early August, just 45 percent of its employees had received a vaccination. It currently stands at 72 percent, indicating that half of Tyson’s unvaccinated employees have received vaccinations far ahead of the company’s November 1st deadline.

Biden announced that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) of the Department of Labor is working on a rule that will require all employers with 100 or more employees to ensure that their workforce is fully vaccinated or to require any workers who are unvaccinated to produce a negative test result at least once a week before reporting to work.

Related Article: Biden Signs An Executive Order Mandating COVID-19 Vaccine To Federal And Private Employees