LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — While some of the daily pandemic numbers are moving in the right direction, others are raising concern.
It's been a trend since the weekend— the higher numbers of hospitalizations, intensive care patients, and patients on a ventilator are causing some state health officials to worry.
"It's not shocking, but it is frustrating," Dr. Robert Hopkins, an Internal Medicine Physician at UAMS, said.
According to Hopkins, across the nation hospitalizations and the number of COVID cases are dropping, but our state isn't following that trend.
"Arkansas is one of at least half a dozen states where the numbers are either flat or they're going up," he said.
From Saturday to Tuesday, hospitalizations rose by 13. This means right now 200 Arkansans are in a hospital battling COVID-19, according to the department of health data.
Hopkins believes the high number is a combination of three things: complacency, low testing numbers, and low vaccine numbers.
"We don't have enough people vaccinated for vaccinations to protect those who haven't been vaccinated," he said.
More younger people are being treated right now for COVID-19 inside the hospitals, according to Hopkins.
"Because they said, 'I'm young, I'm not an older person, I'm not at particularly high risk,' and they're ending up in the hospital with severe COVID because they haven't gotten vaccinated," he said.
Secretary of Health, Dr. Jose Romero, said this fluctuation of hospitalizations isn't unusual but the simple answer to this problem is the shot.
"If we're not going to vaccinate, then this is what we are going to see going forward with the potential of spikes as the season gets colder and we spend more time indoors," he said.
According to Romero, the state saw a 36% increase in the number of variants identified in the last week.
These upward trends are what cause Dr. Jennifer Dillaha, with the department of health, to worry.
"If the trend in hospitalizations is sustained, then that would be concerning to me," she said.
Dillaha said whenever cases rise like they are now, hospitalizations tend to follow, so we have to remain diligent.
The health professionals added that we can't forget to do all those things we did at the beginning of the pandemic.
Washing your hands and wearing a mask, when you don't know whether or not people have been vaccinated, is still just as important.