Arizona has become the state with the highest rate of new COVID-19 infections, a tracker from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Monday.
The CDC’s US map indicated on Monday night that the copper state overtook neighboring California, as well as other hot spots in South Carolina and Tennessee, to take the lead with a rate of increase in new cases. The state is now reporting an average daily case rate of more than 121 per 100,000 people, the only state in the United States with an average of more than 100 new cases per day per 100,000 residents.
To complicate Arizona’s data collection, there is a large part of the state where the information remains incomplete, pending approval by Native American tribal authorities. High transmission rates for COVID-19 are being reported across the state, but in particular around the capital of Phoenix, according to state health officials.
Arizona is one of the few states that resist using strict measures to control the virus. It does not have a masking mandate and remains largely unrestricted in restaurants, bars and nightclub activities that other states implemented months ago to slow the spread of COVID-19.
The state reached a record number of hospitalizations due to the virus last month, with more than 4,300 hospitalized across the state with coronavirus. Governor Doug Ducey
Doug DuceySeven Senate disputes in 2022 Arizona sets record ICU COVID-19 patients Voters vote for Biden amid latent national tensions MORE (R), briefly instituted stay-at-home measures last spring, but declared in May that the state was “clearly on the other side of this pandemic” and relaxed those measures.