(AP Photo / Nardus Engelbrecht)
This is a regularly updated story with the latest information on the coronavirus and its impact in Arizona and beyond on January 18, 2021.
PHOENIX – Arizona health officials reported on Monday 5,400 new cases of coronavirus and no additional deaths from COVID-19.
The state’s documented totals rose to 679,282 COVID-19 infections and 11,265 fatalities after a death was removed due to duplicate data, according to the department’s health panel.
Arizona currently leads the country in cases and has the second highest number of COVID-19 deaths per capita in the past seven days, according to the US Centers for Disease Control.
The state’s COVID-19 hospitalizations began to decline after reaching record levels earlier last week.
The number of confirmed or suspected COVID-19 inpatients in Arizona dropped for the sixth consecutive day to 4,752 on Sunday, the lowest since January 3. The number of ICU beds used by patients with COVID-19 dropped from 21 to 1,097.
Suspected or confirmed COVID-19 patients across the state occupied 55% of all hospital beds, the same as on Saturday, and 61% of all ICU beds on Sunday, down 1% from the previous day .
In general, ICU beds were 93% occupied, while inpatient beds were 92% occupied.
Arizona’s weekly positivity percentage for the COVID-19 diagnostic test, an indicator of how much the virus is spreading in the community, has dropped since it reached its peak two weeks ago.
Of the 141,433 people tested last week, 20% received a positive result. The positive rate in the previous week was 22%, compared to a pandemic of 24%.
Official positivity rates are based on when samples are taken, not when they are reported, so the percentage of the past few weeks may fluctuate as laboratories update tests and results are documented by the state.
The seven-day moving average for the coronavirus recently reported by the state health department was 7,905 on Sunday, falling for the fifth consecutive day, according to the Associated Press tracking.
The seven-day average of newly reported COVID-19 deaths dropped to 160.71 on Sunday, down 13 from Saturday.
Daily state updates show case, death, and test data after the state receives the statistics and confirms them, which can take several days or more. They do not represent actual activity in the past 24 hours.
Hospitalization data published every morning is reported electronically the night before 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 people and is severely debilitating or fatal for others. Infected people without symptoms – which include, but are not limited to, cough, fever and difficulty breathing – are able to spread the virus.
The diagnostic test is available at hundreds of locations across Arizona and should be sought out by anyone with symptoms or who may have been exposed to an infected person. Information on locations, times and registration can be found on the Department of Health Services website.
The department also has a vaccine location page with a map of active and pending sites and links to registration sites.
Below are Monday’s latest developments on the coronavirus pandemic across the state, country and world:
- Globally, there were about 95.1 million cases of COVID-19 and 2.03 million deaths on Monday morning, according to research by Johns Hopkins University. The figures for the US were around 23.9 million cases and 397,611 deaths.