COVID-19 community levels: 1/26/2023
Note: our updates can be a week behind due to our news cycle overlapping with Thursday updates. View the latest CDC and NYTimes updates here.
COVID-19 Community Levels is a tool to help communities decide what prevention steps to take based on the latest data.
All of our synod’s counties are at at low levels: Apache, Clark, Cochise, Coconino, Gila, Graham, Greenlee, La Paz, Maricopa, Mohave, Navajo, Nye, Pima, Pinal, Santa Cruz, Washington, Yavapai, and Yuma.
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
Update for January 20
Most metrics are heading downward at the national level, following a period of growth just after the holidays.
Cases, hospitalizations and test positivity are all down by around 20 percent in the past two weeks. New deaths are slightly higher than they were two weeks ago, but they have begun to level off in recent days.
These improving conditions are most pronounced in the Northeast. New Jersey and New York had some of the country’s worst outbreaks for much of December and early January, but in recent weeks, reported cases have fallen by around 30 percent in both states.
How to read Covid data now
Higher test positivity rates are a sign that many infections are not reported — even if they are tested for at home. This results in a more severe undercount of cases. The number of hospitalized patients with Covid is a more reliable measure because testing is more consistent in hospitals. Read more about the data.