(Photo by Ethan Miller / Getty Images)
PHOENIX – Arizona currently wouldn’t be the country’s worst COVID-19 hotspot if government officials had done a better job of enforcing mitigation rules, according to public health expert Dr. Will Humble.
“Companies – especially bars, restaurants, and nightclubs – recognized that they could get away with cheating on those measures and not be punished,” said Humble, president of the Arizona Public Health Association and former director of the Arizona Department of Health Services. KTAR News 92.3 FM’s The Mike Broomhead Show on Tuesday.
Humble said things have gotten so bad that the only meaningful step to save lives the state could take at this point would be to close bars and limit restaurants to take-out service.
He said that while thousands of companies are subject to mitigation rules set by the state over the summer, the health department has only taken 15 enforcement actions.
‘You tell me that’s a meaningful enforcement of the mitigating measures? … I can’t say it plainly enough: if we had done better enforcement in those indoor environments, I wouldn’t be sitting here on the radio talking about closing those businesses, ”he said.
Humble acknowledged that business closures could wreak economic damage and create additional public health problems, but he noted they helped reverse the first wave of the July pandemic.
He said there is nothing that can oblige the government to combat the spread of coronavirus that occurs during gatherings at private homes, but that is no reason to stop doing anything in terms of mitigation.
“The way I look at it is: what policy levers do you actually have to really make a difference?” he said.
Humble suggested that Governor Doug Ducey could use stockpiled federal relief funds to offset the economic impact of closures.
“But it will take the guts to make that call, knowing that the safety net dollars are there,” he said. He’s saving that CARES Act money. It’s on the couch. “
Humble wondered if Ducey and health director Dr. Cara Christ were concerned about slowing the spread of COVID-19 at this stage.
“I think their attitude was, ‘Look, we’re not going to try to mitigate this problem, we’re going to try to vaccinate ourselves out,’” he said.
As of Tuesday, the health department said about 100,000 of Arizona’s more than 7 million residents have received their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. Low stocks are rationed to prioritized groups.
Meanwhile, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, Arizona has the highest rate of coronavirus transmission per capita and the seventh highest death rate from COVID-19 in the past seven days.
The state hospitals are seeing record numbers of confirmed or suspected COVID-19 patients, and it is about to get worse due to the lack of action in November and December, Humble said.
“It’s not the cases per se that worry me,” he said. “It’s the fact that 7% of them have to be hospitalized in about seven, eight, nine days,” he said.
“It takes that long after you have been diagnosed with the disease before you get sick enough to be hospitalized, and there is… no room at the inn. That is the disturbing thing for me. “