As the number of cases of COVID-19 surges across Tucson, Arizona, the window for crisis prevention narrows.health

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to deteriorate in Arizona and Pima County.

Meanwhile, public health experts continue to warn that hospitals could be overwhelmed in the coming weeks as the latest surge in cases leads to more hospitalizations. This is a situation reminiscent of the last state-wide surge in cases in the summer.

“If we don’t do anything to change the pace of this outbreak, we’ll put a strain on the hospital again,” said Dr. Joe Gerald, an associate professor of public health at the University of Arizona.

“It feels like watching a train crash in slow motion. You know it’s coming, it’s hard to stop the train when it’s roaring at full force is.”

According to the Arizona Health Department’s COVID chart, the total number of new cases has recently increased by 53% weekly from October 25-31 to November 1-7 to 2,005, a diagnostic test. The number increased by 21%. -As of Friday, 19 cases by date.

Over the same time frame, new cases also increased by 53% across the state to 14,551, and diagnostic tests increased by 27%.

The percentage of positive diagnostic tests also increased from the last week of October to the first week of November. In Pima County it rose from 6% to 9%. And it rose from 7% to 9% across the state.

Pima County conducted more tests during the first week of November than any other week during the pandemic.

Still, increasing the number of tests does not increase the number of cases, Gerald said. “The number of tests we are conducting this time is not the main factor in the increase in the number of cases.”

The Harvard Global Health Institute’s COVID-19 Risk Level Map gave all counties in Arizona a red risk rating as of Friday, except for three counties in Arizona. It is the highest of the four categories of green, yellow, orange and red.

In the first week of November, Arizona had about 209 cases per 100,000 people, while Pima County had about 197 cases per 100,000 people.

“That’s not good at all,” Gerald said. “We’re effectively back in mid-June, where the incident exploded on our face.”

The number of new COVID-19 hospitalizations has increased weekly across the state since mid-September.

The same is true for Pima County. According to a statement from the Pima County Health Department on Friday, hospitalized cases of COVID-19 increased weekly, bringing the total to 75 in the first week of November.

“We are very worried about holidays, especially Thanksgiving,” Health Director Dr. Teresa Karen said in a statement on Friday. “This is starting to look like the beginning of the giant spikes we saw in the summer.”

“We need to take additional steps that we know will help slow the spread of the virus,” Cullen said. “If we can’t reduce these numbers, we will continue to struggle to keep people healthy and discharged.”

Deaths are on the rise across states and counties, but well below their summer peaks. Gerald points out that the low mortality rate is partly due to improved treatments for COVID-19 and fewer cases of older and vulnerable people living in long-term care facilities.

Still, Gerald urged policy makers to confront the virus before it was too late and things got worse.

He pointed out that Arizona is not yet obliged to wear state-wide masks. And places in the state that have such an obligation do little to enforce it.

“We’re like relying on people to quote. Not quoting does the right thing,” he said. “And not in many places.”

It’s a wasteful opportunity, as more people wear masks, Arizona may not need to close its business in the future, but the opportunity to prevent closure has almost passed, he said. It was.

Other than temporarily closing the business, another measure that policymakers may consider is to further limit restaurant capacity, he said, and eating at a full-service restaurant is more He said it was a high-risk activity.

“If it keeps getting worse, I think shutdown may be the only way to prevent us from completely overwhelming the system,” Gerald said.

“We need to do something and we need to do it within the next few weeks. If we don’t do it within the next few weeks, we’ll miss an opportunity and we’ll be overwhelmed. Because. In our hospitals and critical care facilities. “