COVID-19 community levels: March 17, 2022
COVID-19 Community Levels is a tool to help communities decide what prevention steps to take based on the latest data.
High level counties in our synod are Apache, La Paz and Yuma.
Medium level counties are Cochise, Coconino, Gila, Graham, Greenlee, Maricopa, Navajo, Pima, Pinal, Santa Cruz, Yavapai, and Yuma.
Low level counties are Clark, Mohave, and Washington. (Links go to most recent county at The New York Times.)
At all levels including the low level, prevention steps include:
Stay up to date with COVID-19 vaccines
Get tested if you have symptoms
At the medium level, if you are at high risk for severe illness, talk to your healthcare provider about whether you need to wear a mask and take other precautions.
At the high level, wear a mask indoors in public. Additional precautions may be needed for people at high risk for severe illness.
Levels can be low, medium, or high and are determined by looking at hospital beds being used, hospital admissions, and the total number of new COVID-19 cases in an area.
State of the virus
Virus activity continues to wane across the United States, with new case reports reaching their lowest levels since last summer.
Coronavirus hospitalizations have fallen more than three-quarters from their January peak, to about 35,000 from more than 150,000. The number of patients in intensive care units has also plummeted.
Around 1,400 deaths continue to be announced most days, well below the peak of the Omicron wave but still very high. More than 960,000 deaths have been attributed to Covid-19 in the United States.
Fewer people are hospitalized with Covid-19, and fewer new cases are being announced each day, than in the weeks before the highly infectious Omicron variant became dominant in the United States.
Every state is in far better shape than it was at the height of Omicron, and almost every state continues to see significant declines in daily case reports and hospitalizations.
New case reports are down more than 70 percent in the last two weeks in South Carolina, Louisiana and Iowa. Those states have also seen hospitalizations decline at least 50 percent in that period.