Employees from the Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office transport bodies to a refrigerated semi-truck at the Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office on January 14, 2021 in Tucson, Arizona. After reaching maximum capacity in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, two refrigerated trucks arrived at the Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office for extra 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 – Arizona health officials reported on Friday 9,146 new cases of coronavirus and 185 additional deaths from COVID-19.
The state’s documented totals reached 658,186 COVID-19 infections and 11,040 deaths, according to the department’s health panel.
More than 1,100 deaths have been added to the total in the past seven days.
Arizona has maintained top spot nationally in cases and deaths per capita for 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 this week.
The number of confirmed or suspected COVID-19 patients in Arizona decreased for the third consecutive day to 4,866 on Thursday, the lowest since January 4. The number of ICU beds used by patients with COVID-19 has dropped for the second consecutive day to 1,138, the lowest since January 9.
Suspected or confirmed COVID-19 patients across the state occupied 56% of all hospital beds and 63% of all ICU beds on Thursday, both below the previous day.
In general, inpatient beds and ICU 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 highest point two weeks ago.
Of the 67,870 people tested this week, 20% received a positive result. The positive rate is 22% for the 204,788 people tested last week, 2 percentage points below the record level of the previous week.
Official positivity rates are based on when samples are collected, 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 9,206.71 on Thursday, dropping for the second consecutive day, according to tracking from The Associated Press.
The seven-day average of COVID-19 deaths recently reported fell to 159.14 on Thursday, beating a record-breaking eight-day streak.
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 in 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 Friday’s latest developments on the coronavirus pandemic across the state, country and world:
- Globally, there were about 93.24 million cases of COVID-19 and 2 million deaths on Friday morning, according to Johns Hopkins University research. The figures for the US are around 23.32 million cases and 389,000 deaths.