Arizona health officials this week downgraded the state’s COVID-19 dashboard and declared the disease “a common respiratory illness.”
Arizona’s dashboard will no longer include COVID-19 cases by ZIP code, vaccinations by ZIP code, or the number of COVID-19 cases in congregate settings like nursing homes and assisted living facilities. The updated dashboard also no longer includes the death toll that counts deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. Rather, it gives a three-year average along with the number of deaths per year and does the same for hospitalisations.
Starting Oct. 11, the state will include COVID-19 during the week in its routine reporting on the spread of influenza and RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus.
The changes were expected and were one of a series of pandemic-era practices that have either ended or been significantly reduced in scope. Arizona Department of Health Services officials say they have not completed the Arizona COVID-19 report, but it is something they are considering. Some public health experts say such reports could serve as a guide for any future pandemic that hits the state.
“I think we’re all tired of COVID-19 to some extent, but it was a unique time and I think the lessons were learned,” said Dr. Joe Gerald, associate professor of health policy at the university. He was very important.” of the University of Arizona’s Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health.
Taking a look at Arizona’s response to COVID-19 could help streamline future responses, ensuring the state is better prepared to “avoid some of the confusion and missteps that occurred early in our pandemic response.” Well prepared, and could become a guide for future public health leaders, Gerald said. He said this would be helpful in addressing infrastructure, surveillance, schools and the approach to mass vaccination.
State health officials say they have discussed creating a COVID-19 report “to help uncover the overall picture of what happened,” but have yet to create that report “to date.” There is no timeline,” state health department spokesman Tom Herrmann wrote in an email.
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Will Humble, who is executive director of the Arizona Public Health Association, reviewed the updated dashboard and said the changes appear to be in line with the situation that has become of COVID-19, a common respiratory virus like RSV or flu. There is a virus. He liked that there are tabs, one marked “severity,” that allows users to track trends in deaths and hospitalizations. The tabs also include “Weekly Summary” and “Year-by-Year Trends”.
Like the flu and RSV, COVID-19 is still a virus that can be deadly, though the numbers are not what they once were at the peak of the pandemic. In Arizona, 14,042 people have been hospitalized due to COVID-19 so far this year and 1,385 have died. State data shows the number of deaths for the week ending Sept. 23 was 13, 91% below the three-year COVID-19 average for that week.
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Gerald said the changes to the dashboard “seem appropriate,” though he is concerned about the state ending tracking of COVID-19 in congregate settings, “not so much from a population perspective, but long-term care Infection control practices in facilities are important,” he said.
“This population is uniquely vulnerable, and transparency of reporting can be an important check to ensure that long-term care facilities remain vigilant in protecting their residents,” he said. “Having reporting from long-term care facilities available publicly can provide incentives that might not otherwise exist to ensure that those facilities continue to do what is required and what they can do to maintain the safety of their residents.” Can.”
The updated dashboard includes COVID-19 deaths by age and shows that 87% of COVID-19 deaths this year have occurred in people aged 65 and older.
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While the Arizona COVID-19 dashboard never included reporting of COVID-19 outbreaks in hospitals, Gerald said the data will also be helpful, because if infection control practices are not diligently followed If so, hospitals are a potential source of spread of infection. Also, like those in long-term care facilities, hospitalized patients are more vulnerable to COVID-19 than healthy people living in the community, he said.
“Some transparency in that particular setting may provide some external incentives for hospitals to maintain diligence,” Gerald said.
Before the Oct. 4 update, the state’s COVID-19 dashboard listed more than 33,500 deaths from COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic. That number is no longer on the website and Herrmann suggested using the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention COVID-19 tracker, which uses a more conservative definition of COVID-19 deaths than the state’s real-time monitoring. Uses.
CDC data says there have been 29,771 COVID-19 deaths in Arizona since the start of the pandemic in March 2020. The federal agency says that as of Sept. 30, Arizona ranked 16th in the nation for the rate of COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 people. , Arizona’s rate is 325.4 cases per 100,000 people and the national average is 286.4 deaths per 100,000 people. According to the CDC, the rate is highest in Mississippi and lowest in Hawaii.
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Arizona has had several severe waves of COVID-19, and a federal analysis says Arizonans lost 2.5 years of life expectancy between 2019 and 2020, compared to 1.8 years of life lost during the same time period. The decline was worse than the average US decline for the year.
Contact health care reporter Stephanie Innes at [email protected] or 602-444-8369. Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter: @StephanieInnes,