View This Week’s Epidemiology & Hospital Utilization Report from Dr. Gerald
This week Arizona crossed over the 20,000 COVID-19 deaths mark. This pandemic would always have taken many lives no matter what kinds of interventions that Governor Ducey and former Director Christ implemented. The fact that they were hostile to masking requirements (even preventing cities and counties, schools and universities from requiring masks) and were unwilling to do any mitigation in bars, restaurants and nightclubs led to Arizona’s lethal outcome.
Arizona is 6th in the nation in COVID19 mortality because of Governor Ducey and former Director Christ’s decisions. For example, Colorado and Washington State have similar populations to Arizona yet have only had about 7,500 COVID-19 deaths. The difference? They have thoughtful governors and health directors.
Some have suggested that Arizona has had such a lethal pandemic because we have a disproportionately high number of older persons per capita. This is FALSE. After adjusting for age, Arizona has the 3rd highest per-capita death rate from COVID19, just under New Jersey (which experienced the first wave at a very bad time) and Texas, which, like Arizona, has a governor and health director that are hostile to all public health interventions.
Current Situation Report from Dr. Gerald:
Arizona continues to experience high levels of community transmission with case rates plateauing. The decline in cases per week over the last 2 weeks has stopped and we are now no longer decreasing. Test positivity remains stubbornly high reminding us that test capacity, accessibility, and/or uptake is inadequate to meet public health needs.
With waning vaccine efficacy and a potentially short duration of acquired immunity, there’s little reason to believe the unvaccinated can evade infection with the considerably higher risk of severe outcome it entails. See this article from The Lancet for details. This trifecta means that persistently high levels of transmission, and more importantly hospitalizations, are possible for an extended time-period until we’ve exhausted our supply of unvaccinated, previously uninfected adults.
COVID-19 hospital occupancy is slowly improving. Nevertheless, occupancy is likely to exceed 20% of all beds in the general ward and 25% of beds in the ICU for another week. Access to care will remain restricted even on the backside of waning COVID-19 case rates. Expect delays in elective procedures to persist especially given worsening staff shortages in inpatient and outpatient settings.
