TUCSON, AZ – JANUARY 14: An employee walks in Tucson, Arizona on January 14, 2021, toward refrigerated semi-trucks with corpses at the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner. After reaching capacity amid the COVID-19 pandemic, two refrigerated trucks arrived at the medical examiner’s Pima County office for extra storage space. (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 16, 2021.
PHOENIX – Arizona health officials on Saturday reported 8,715 new cases of coronavirus and 208 additional deaths due to COVID-19.
The state’s documented total moved to 666,901 COVID-19 infections and 11,248 deaths, according to the Department of Health’s dashboard.
More than 1,000 deaths have been added to the total in the past seven days.
According to U.S. Centers for Disease Control, Arizona currently has the largest number of cases in the country and has the second highest number of COVID-19 deaths per capita in the past seven days.
COVID-19 hospitalizations in the state began to decline after rising to record levels earlier this week.
The number of confirmed or suspected COVID-19 inpatients in Arizona dropped to 4,849 for the fourth consecutive day on Friday, the lowest since January 4th. The number of ICU beds used by COVID-19 patients increased by six to 1,144.
In the country, COVID-19 patients suspect or confirm, they took 56% of all beds and 64% of all ICU beds on Friday.
Overall, in-bed beds were 92% full.
Arizona’s weekly percentage of positivity for COVID-19 diagnostic tests, an indication of how much the virus is spreading in the community, has dropped since it reached an everyday peak two weeks ago.
Of the 95,022 people tested this week, 20% got a positive result. The positive rate is 22% for the 204,788 people tested last week, a 2 percentage point drop from the previous week’s record level.
Official positivity rates are based on taking the samples, not when they are reported, so the percentage for recent weeks may vary as laboratories are caught up in the test and the results are documented by the state.
The seven-day moving average for the coronavirus of the state health department was 8,847.86 on Friday, and it dropped for the third consecutive day, according to detection by The Associated Press.
The average of seven days of the newly reported COVID-19 deaths decreased to 157.43 on Friday, which is the second consecutive day that the number of deaths has decreased.
The state’s daily updates provide the current case, death and testing data after the state receives and confirms statistics, which may be delayed by a few days or longer. It does not represent the actual activity during the last 24 hours.
The hospital data posted each morning is electronically reported the night before by 100 hospitals across the state, as required by executive order.
COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, has no effect on some people and is severely debilitating or deadly to others. Infected people without symptoms – which include coughing, fever and breathing problems – can spread the virus.
Diagnostic tests are available in hundreds of locations in Arizona and should be sought by someone with symptoms or who has been exposed to an infected person. Information on places, schedules and registration can be found on the website of the Department of Health Services.
The department also has a page for vaccination finders with a map of active and pending locations and links to registration sites.
Below are Saturday’s latest developments on the coronavirus pandemic from across the state, country and world:
- Worldwide, there were approximately 93.97 million COVID-19 cases and 2.01 million deaths as of Friday morning, according to research by Johns Hopkins University. The figures for the US were about 23.53 million cases and 392,182 deaths.