After more than two years of mostly negative reports about how the battle against COVID-19 is going, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors finally got some genuine good news this week.
While COVID-19 is still the No. 1 concern for the Maricopa County Department of Health, improvements in a variety of statistical categories were reported Monday by two members of that department.
Speaking to the board during a special meeting, Marcy Flanagan, the director of MCDPH, and Dr. Rebecca Sunenshine, the department’s medical director for disease control, presented several statistics, covering various recent short time periods.
Among the many statistics in which the county’s COVID-19 numbers have improved is cases per 100,000 residents. For its 4.42 million residents, Maricopa County had a case rate of 157 per 100,000 residents for the week of Feb. 13-19, dropping 46% to 87 for week of Feb. 20-26.
Flanagan said at the end of January, the county’s case rate was significantly higher.
“A little over a month ago, we were at more than 2,000%,” Flanagan said.
Another area in which Maricopa County has improved drastically since late January is total hospitalizations, which plummeted from 2,539 on Feb. 1 to about 800 as of March 3. Another is deaths, which peaked for this year at 105 reported on Jan. 26 and has trended downward, leading to only eight deaths reported on Feb. 26.
By the CDC’s definition of low, medium and high levels of community COVID-19 transmission, most Maricopa County zip codes are now at the medium level, Flanagan said. That level calls for patients at high risk for poor outcomes of severe illness to talk with health care providers about whether to wear masks and take other precautions.
The CDC also encourages anyone in the medium level of transmission to get tested if experiencing any COVID-19 symptoms. The agency also encourages all Americans to stay current on COVID-19 vaccines.
Flanagan said the CDC and her agency both recommend masks when around others for two groups of Maricopa County residents: Anyone who’s had a known exposure to a COVID-19-positive person within the past 10 days and anyone with a respiratory illness.
She also went over the updated and elaborate CDC-recommended procedure for contact tracing. She pointed out home test kits, which weren’t available until recently, are naturally excluded from COVID-19 investigations.
Sunenshine said data shows the unvaccinated were three times more likely to test positive for COVID-19.
“One of the many confusing aspects about vaccine information was that upon finding out the vaccinated could still get COVID and pass it on, some people asked ‘Why should I get vaccinated, then?,” Sunenshine said. “Our county’s data shows vaccinated people are far less likely to contract COVID-19, are far less contagious and are much less likely to suffer severe outcomes.”
Sunenshine said there are still many reasons for all county residents to pursue Pfizer or Moderna booster shots, per CDC guidance. There are very few scenarios in which someone would be directed to get a Johnson & Johnson booster, she said, as that vaccine has been demonstrated as less effective, she said.
“If I would have gotten the J & J vaccine, based on the data, I would get a booster of one of the two MRNA vaccines (Moderna or Pfizer),” she said.
Jason W. Brooks is a News editor for the Daily Independent and the Chandler Independent.
He covers the Chandler area for both yourvalley.net and the monthly print edition while writing for and assisting in the production of the Daily Independent.
Brooks is a well-traveled journalist who has documented life in small American communities in nearly all U.S. time zones.
Born in Washington, D.C. and raised there and in suburban Los Angeles, he has covered community news in California, New Mexico, Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska and northern Arizona.
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