COVID-19 community levels: 2/9/2023
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 February 2
Conditions are improving in most of the country, with reported cases and hospitalizations both falling by more than 20 percent nationally in the past two weeks.
The decline in hospitalizations has been particularly notable. Just over 30,000 people are currently hospitalized with the coronavirus nationwide, down from almost 50,000 in early January. Hospitalizations are decreasing in almost every state.
Test positivity, however, has begun to tick up in recent days after a few weeks of sustained declines. If the trend continues, cases and hospitalizations could also begin to rise again in the coming weeks.
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.