Ever since the beginning of the pandemic, Dr. Joe Gerald at the UA’s Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health has been writing weekly reports that have been super-valuable for hospital systems, county health departments, clinicians, schools, nursing homes and assisted living centers, other university researchers, journalists and the general public.
ADHS senior leadership appears to have taken little heed of his important findings each week – but the rest of the public health system eagerly awaited each weekly epidemiology and hospital capacity report.
This weekend Dr. Gerald published his final weekly report. I personally want to thank Dr. Gerald for his incredible work over the last year as he helped all of us to understand where we were and where we were likely going (epidemiologically). He also frequently provided sound advice for mitigating spread.
Here is Dr. Gerald’s summary of this week’s report. As always, we encourage you to view the full report and Appendix for details and context.
Arizona continues to chug along with COVID-19 case rates >50 cases per 100,000 residents per week (looking at you Maricopa County). As mentioned last time, the ASU COVID-19 Modeling group estimates the doldrums to continue for most of the summer before materially improving. This is the result of continued normalization of behavior, more prevalent highly-transmissible variants, and slowing vaccination rates.
Even though too many Arizonans are not fully vaccinated as we would like, another summer resurgence seems off-the-table. That doesn’t mean though we won’t experience thousands more COVID-19 cases and hundreds more COVID-19 deaths over the summer. So, please get vaccinated if you haven’t already.
As mentioned last time, this is my last regularly scheduled COVID-19 update. If something unforeseen develops, I’ll be sure to let you know. I would like to thank you to everyone who has been reading these reports and dropping me notes of encouragement!
If you would like to show your appreciation, please feel free to send an e-mail to my Department Chair, Dr. Kelly Reynolds (reynolds@arizona.edu) letting her know how these reports have been valuable to you or your organization.
I hope you have a safe and enjoyable summer!