Arizona has the highest rate of new COVID-19 cases in the US, CDC says

Arizona has the highest rate of new COVID-19 cases in the United States, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says.

Arizona's rate of positive new daily coronavirus cases over the past seven days was 121.8 cases per 100,000 people, which was higher than any other state in the country, the CDC's COVID Data Tracker said Monday afternoon. The next-highest state behind Arizona is California, with a rate of 97.1 new daily cases per 100,000 people over the past seven days, per the CDC. The U.S. average for new cases, according to the CDC, is 64.7 cases per day per 100,000 people.

The federal agency's data puts the top five states for their rates of new cases in order as Arizona, California, Tennessee, South Carolina and Kansas.

Arizona reported 62,047 cases over the past week, including more than 17,200 new COVID-19 cases on Sunday, which was a record high for a single day. A predicted surge came after Thanksgiving and health experts say the numbers could continue to go up because of gatherings over Christmas and New Year's Eve.

Sixty-one percent of Arizona's ICU beds were occupied by COVID-19 patients as of Monday morning and just 7% of the state's ICU beds were available. New cases in Arizona have eclipsed 5,000 for 23 of the past 30 days.

Phoenix-area hospitals last week started temporarily closing to incoming emergency transports and hospital transfers because of overwhelming patient counts. Hospital leaders say facilities are in their worst position since the pandemic began.

"I probably sound like a broken record- but I feel compelled to say again that the situation we now find ourselves in is not because of fate as the governor and state health director suggest," Will Humble, Arizona Public Health Association director, wrote in a Jan. 3 policy update.

"It is largely because they have been unwilling to implement evidence-based interventions this fall including authentic enforcement of the existing 'required' mitigation measures for bars, restaurants and nightclubs. A requirement without enforcement is merely a suggestion."

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey has not implemented mitigation measures that have been requested by leaders of major hospital and health systems across the state, including a statewide mask mandate that focuses on business compliance, a ban on indoor dining, closure of bars and nightclubs and except for essential services, limit public gatherings to no more than 25 people.

Early in December, a group of eight health leaders from across Arizona asked for immediate state actions on what they deemed a worsening COVID-19 crisis, including a statewide curfew and no indoor dining at restaurants.

Ducey expanded outdoor dining at restaurants, but indoor dining is still allowed. Arizona does not have a statewide mask mandate, although individual jurisdictions are allowed to put them in place, and most residents of the state live in an area with a mask requirement, according to research by the governor's office.

Other leaders, including state schools superintendent Kathy Hoffman, have called for a mandatory quarantine for travelers entering Arizona, but so far that has not happened.

Most hospitals in Arizona have now cancelled scheduled procedures to ensure adequate capacity for patients with COVID-19 care, University of Arizona public health researcher Joe Gerald wrote in a Dec. 18 COVID-19 report.

"We have now all but locked in a major humanitarian crisis during the Christmas–New Year holiday with hundreds of preventable deaths per week," Gerald wrote.

"A statewide shelter-in-place order is warranted to slow transmission and to mitigate the worst of overcrowding in our hospital system. A statewide mask mandate is also needed. Individuals and business who do not comply with restrictions should face sanctions."

As of Monday, 9,064 Arizonans are known to have died from COVID-19, according to the data dashboard from the Arizona Department of Health Services.

The latest projections from the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation show Arizona having 15,637 deaths from COVID-19 by April 1. With a statewide mask mandate, that number could be reduced to 14,131, the researchers estimated. The IHME projections are one tool that hospitals and public health officials use in determining the course the epidemic will take, and the projections regularly change.

Republic reporter Alison Steinbach contributed to this article.

Reach health care reporter Stephanie Innes at Stephanie.Innes@gannett.com or at 602-444-8369. Follow her on Twitter @stephanieinnes.

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