AZ Pandemic Numbers Summary for the Seven Days Ending December 14: Quite a Bit to Like

 


Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending Wednesday December 14:



I sure didn't expect this. The only concerning thing is a 50% increase in deaths. But as I've mentioned before we can't be sure when those deaths occurred because of unreliable AzDHS reporting.

COVID inpatient beds are up just a tiny bit over the week and not by much more over the month. As noted before, this is probably the best indicator of current infections and it seems to have leveled off.

Maricopa County and Tempe wastewater numbers are both down by about the same amount. Yavapai County is up a little and Mohave County is up more substantially.  Pima data was missing this week.

It's worth noting that the latest figures from Lim Lab show that over half the cases sequenced are caused BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 variants. Yet the numbers seem to be stabilizing, not shooting up. Perhaps this means these new variants are not the threats public health officials worried they might be.


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