A nurse prepares a syringe of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine during a national vaccination campaign at Saint George’s Hospital in Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, February 16, 2021. (Photo AP / Hussein Malla)
This is a regularly updated story with the latest information about coronavirus and its impact in Arizona and not just for February 16, 2021.
Phoenix
The state’s documented totals have risen to 799,740 infections and 14,981 deaths, according to the Arizona Department of Health’s COVID-19 dashboard.
COVID-19 hospitalizations and daily case averages have steadily declined over the past month, but the death rate remains higher than during the Arizona summer wave.
The number of hospitalized patients confirmed or suspected by Arizona for COVID-19 fell to 2,047 months, the lowest since November 22.
Arizona’s weekly positivity test for diagnosing COVID-19, an indicator of how widespread the virus is in the community, has been declining every week since early 2021.
Of the 88,218 people tested last week, 9% received a positive result, the lowest rate since the end of October.
Official positivity rates are based on the time of sampling, not the time they are reported, so the percentage in recent weeks may fluctuate as laboratories are tested and the results are documented by the state.
The seven-day average for recently reported state health department coronavirus cases was 2245.86 months, according to a follow-up by The Associated Press, the second lowest score since Nov. 14.
The seven-day average of recently reported deaths has remained stubbornly since the beginning of February and was 131.96 months.
In Monday’s update from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, Arizona ranked third in the country for COVID-19 deaths per capita in the past seven days and 13th in cases.
Daily updates from the Arizona Department of Health present case, death, and test data after the state receives statistics and confirms them, which can remain for a few days or more. It is not the actual activity of the last 24 hours.
Hospitalization data posted each morning is reported electronically the previous evening by 100 hospitals across the state, as required by the executive order.
COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, has no impact on some and is severely debilitating or fatal to others. Asymptomatic infected people – which include, but are not limited to, cough, fever, and difficulty breathing – are able to spread the virus.
Diagnostic testing is available in hundreds of locations in Arizona and should be looked for by anyone with symptoms or who may have been exposed to an infected person. Information about locations, programs and registration can be found on the website of the Department of Health Services.
For more information on vaccine availability at the state level, the ADHS website has a vaccine search page with a map of locations and registration information.
Below are the latest developments on Tuesday about the coronavirus pandemic across the country, country and world:
- Winter weather affecting much of the country delayed COVID-19 vaccine shipments to Arizona this week and forced the cancellation of meetings.
- The Navajo nation reported 24 new cases of coronavirus and there were no additional deaths, bringing the documented totals to 29,308 infections – including a delayed case – and 1,112 deaths.
- The health department of Pima County announced that the pre-registration for COVID-19 vaccination schedules will be extended on the county sites supported for people over the age of 65, starting at 9 o’clock on Thursday.
- All nearly 12,000 new appointments for the state-of-the-art COVID-19 vaccination site at the University of Arizona were broken in about 2½ hours.
- The Arizona Department of Health reported that 1,227,271 of the 1,395,300 doses of state-allocated COVID-19 vaccine were administered, an increase of 10,145 from the previous day.
- Globally, there have been approximately 109.25 million COVID-19 cases and 2.41 million deaths since Tuesday morning, according to research from Johns Hopkins University. The figures for the US were about 27.7 million cases and 486,000 deaths.