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.
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