Employees at the Pima County medical examiner’s office will move bodies to a refrigerated semi-truck near the medical examiner’s office in Pima County on Jan. 14, 2021 in Tucson, Arizona. After reaching capacity during the COVID-19 pandemic, two refrigerated semi-trucks arrived at the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner for additional storage. (Photo by Courtney Pedroza / Getty Images)
This is a regularly updated story with the latest information on the coronavirus and its impact in Arizona and beyond for January 15, 2021.
PHOENIX – Health officials in Arizona reported 9,146 new cases of coronavirus and 185 additional deaths from COVID-19 on Friday.
The state’s documented totals rose to 658,186 COVID-19 infections and 11,040 fatalities, according to the health department’s dashboard.
More than 1,100 deaths have occurred in the past seven days.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, Arizona has held the highest place nationally for both cases and deaths per capita for the past seven days.
The state’s COVID-19 hospitalizations have started to decline after rising to record levels earlier this week.
The number of confirmed or suspected COVID-19 patients in Arizona fell for the third consecutive day to 4,866 on Thursday, the lowest number since Jan. 4. The number of IC beds used by COVID-19 patients decreased for the second least since January 9.
Statewide, suspected or confirmed COVID-19 patients occupied 56% of all hospital beds and 63% of all IC beds on Thursday, both less than the previous day.
In total, the beds for hospitalization and the beds in the intensive care unit were each 92% full.
Arizona’s weekly percent positivity for COVID-19 diagnostic tests, an indicator of how much the virus is spreading in the community, has dropped since it hit an all-time high two weeks ago.
Of the 67,870 people tested this week, 20% got a positive result. The positive rate is 22% for the 204,788 people tested last week, 2 percentage points lower than the previous week’s record level.
Official positivity rates are based on when the samples are taken, not when they are reported, so the rate for the past few weeks may fluctuate as labs are testing and the results are documented by the state.
The seven-day moving average for the state health department’s newly reported coronavirus was 9,206.71 on Thursday, falling for the second straight day, according to tracking by The Associated Press.
The seven-day mean of newly reported COVID-19 deaths fell to 159.14 on Thursday, a run of eight consecutive record days.
The state updates current case, death, and test data daily after the state receives and confirms statistics, which can delay several days or more. They do not reflect actual activity for the past 24 hours.
The hospital admission data posted each morning is electronically reported the night before by 100 hospitals across the state as required under executive order.
COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, does not affect some people and is severely disabling or fatal to others. Infected people without symptoms – including but not limited to a cough, fever, and difficulty breathing – can spread the virus.
Diagnostic tests are available at hundreds of locations in Arizona and should be sought by anyone with symptoms or who may have been exposed to an infected person. Information on locations, schedules, and registration can be found on the Department of Health Services website.
The department also has a vaccine finder page with a map of active and pending locations and links to registration websites.
Below are Friday’s latest developments regarding the coronavirus pandemic from across the state, country and world:
- According to research from Johns Hopkins University, there were approximately 93.24 million COVID-19 cases worldwide and 2 million deaths on Friday morning. The figures for the US were about 23.32 million cases and 389,000 deaths.