AZ Pandemic Numbers Summary for the Seven Days Ending March 16: Enjoy It While You Can

 

Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday:




Everything continues to look good. Case rates are essentially down to levels seen last spring. Hospital beds are declining and are below ten percent. There is a slight uptick in deaths, but it's a fraction of a case per 100K and it is expected for deaths to lag case declines.

However, I worry this may be an "enjoy it while you can" situation. Case rates are increasing in Europe again due to the so-called "stealth" Omicron variant.  They have seen case rates roughly double from late February to mid-March. In Arizona, just yesterday it was reported to account for 10% of cases in Pima County.

Experience shows that what happens in Europe tends to happen here about two weeks later. Now, thanks to our leaders failing a marshmallow test and dropping reporting frequencies to weekly, we are not going to know the increase is hitting in Arizona until it's underway for a week. So be careful out there.

Maricopa County "Community Level"

I think I figured out what is behind uncertainty about the Maricopa County "community level" category. Last week I noted that the "moderate" level they reported did not seem to fit their own criteria, depending on how you interpreted their numbers.

It turns out that the CDC was saying the county is "moderate" too. Their rules are here (and BTW do not match the table on the Maricopa County site). 

The only case-based distinction the CDC makes is less vs. greater than 200 cases per 100K over a week. Maricopa County was and is below that at 55 a week. 

After that it's based on hospital admissions and inpatient beds to distinguish low from moderate from severe. Statewide we were at 9% beds (8% this week) but AzDHS doesn't list admissions as far as I can tell. (For that matter it's not clear to me what the difference is; if you're admitted don't you require a bed?)  

Maricopa County just lists "hospitalizations," but doesn't define what that means. Also the latest seven-day average they give is almost one week old, so it's hard to figure out how this results in their community level classification today.

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