AZ Pandemic Numbers for the Week Ending June 26—Start of a New Surge?

 


Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers for the week just ended:


There are worrisome red numbers in the one-week change column. Maricopa county is up not quite one percent, and we've seen temporary increases like that before. But combined with a 1.6% increase statewide and a 4% increase in positive test percentage, and an increase in hospitalizations, this may be something to worry about.

In fact, new cases have been trending up statewide for the last two weeks, as indicated by the trend line in this graph (data from ASU Biodesign Dashboard):


The increase could be due to increasing presence of the Delta variant, which as I noted yesterday is increasing fast in Arizona. To help keep track of this nastier form of the bug, I have added a new row to the weekly stats to track it.  

One caveat is that the GISAID database, where the variant data comes from, is (as far as I know) not automatically updated. Organizations doing the sequencing have to upload the data and it make take time to do this. The sequencing takes time as well.  GISAID entries contain the collection date, and I group them by this to get a week's percent. But the current or even past week's percentage may not contain all the sequences done but not yet uploaded. 

One reason cases due to the Delta variant may be going up is that our vaccination effort has nearly stalled.  Here is this week's accelerometer:


We've now had increases each week over the last month in fractions of a percent.  How long will it take to get to where we need to be at this pace?

An average of 58,516 new people have become fully vaccinated each week for the month of June. We are currently 2,561,346 people short of what we would need for 70% of the state to be fully vaccinated. That's the rule-of-thumb for what we need to reach population immunity.

Assuming those increases continue at a similar pace (and don't in fact slow further), it will take 43 more weeks for us to hit 70%.  That's toward the end of next April.  


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