Corona-zona

  Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending Wednesday: Everything is looking good, except a 29% increase in COVID-19 hospital beds. That is still within what has been normal variation since the beginning of the year, so nothing to get too excited about.  Deaths are up, but those numbers from from AzHDS, which  as we know  does not have reliable reporting practices. Given all of this, and given that the COVID-19 public health emergency ended yesterday , this is a good time to end these updates and retire the blog. I will continue to keep an eye on numbers and restart if it looks like a new wave is brewing, but I hope that is not necessary. Some of you have posted comments on the AZ Coronavirus  subreddit  saying you found these updates helpful for knowing when to take precautions. I'm happy to know this, because it has taken some work!   If you want to monitor things on your own going forward, below are links to the resources

  Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending Wednesday: Everything is looking pretty good. Some of the wastewater signals are up, but all of the direct indicators are down. That 20% increase in state cases last week turned into a 17% decrease this week so it was indeed another reporting anomaly. Maricopa County didn't update today like usual so those numbers are from last Friday. Likewise the Pima County wastewater numbers are stale.

  Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending Wednesday: AzDHS case numbers are 17.5% higher than last week. But given that everything else shows a decrease, I will go out on a limb and say this is probably another reporting snafu where they found a bunch of old cases and threw them in this week's hopper. I suspected the same was true for deaths last week, which spiked by 125%. Sure enough, they decreased by 70% this week and are back down to the same place they have been for quite some time. It's hard to understand why they do this. The whole point of weekly reporting is to get an idea of what is happening in the short term. Throwing in old cases does nothing but generate noise.  The only other news is that, like last week, Tempe again did not maintain its ten day wastewater reporting lag. If we're looking at a consistent 17 day lag now, what's the point in publishing it at all? We don't need to know what condi

Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending Wednesday: Last week I was a little concerned we might be getting into something again because everything was up. But this week we're back to a mix of small increases and small decreases.  The exception to that is deaths, which are up a lot. Most likely, though, this is due to AzDHS reporting anomalies as we have seen it before. Once again Tempe has failed to update their wastewater dashboard. I should be able to get the missing data next time.

  Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending Wednesday: Well gee, I was really enjoying the sea of green last week. Now it looks like a red tide! Nothing to get alarmed about as a one-week change. None of the changes are big except Tempe and Yavapai wastewater.  That kink at the end of the case graph is a little concerning. We'll see what happens next week. Previous Posts You May Have Missed: New "Arcturus" COVID-19 Strain Surging in India: Here We Go Again?

  Welp, there's a newer, worser COVID-19 strain in the wild, y'all. I've been wondering why it's been so long since we've seen news of a threatening new variant.  They are calling this one "Arcturus." The name, according to Wikipedia , means "guardian of the bear." That doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, but then again I'm not a Greek mythology nerd.  Anyway, this variant is another of the Sons of Omicron. It descended from XBB, and has the designation XBB.1.16.  Another such descendant, XBB.1.5, is currently the king of the hill in Arizona, according to Lim Lab . XBB and its descendants are dominant nationwide, according to BioBot . According to The Independent , Arcturus was first detected in January. It is now spreading in like wildfire in India.  Like all the Sons of Omicron, this variant is "the most contagious yet," but has relatively low disease severity. One point of concern is that officials believe an "infa