A day after reporting fewer than 2,000 new COVID-19 cases for the first time in weeks, Arizona’s daily case count has shot up to nearly 3,000.
The state Department of Health Services reported 2,971 new cases Tuesday along with 77 more deaths.
Typically, data released on Mondays is lower because of a lag in reporting on weekends. It’s not clear how much of this increase may be due to a lag in reporting on a holiday weekend.
The latest statistics bring Arizona’s total pandemic case count to 1,269,780 and the number of deaths to 22,307.
Hospitalizations due to COVID-19 continued to rise from a day earlier to 2,676. They have been on an upward trajectory after slightly dipping to 2,500 on Thanksgiving Day.
Public health experts worry about a major rise in cases and hospitalizations in the weeks following Thanksgiving, where more people with mixed vaccination status gathered indoors. There are also growing concerns about the omicron variant, which has popped up in other countries.
According to Johns Hopkins University data, Arizona’s seven-day rolling average of daily new cases dipped to 3,281 on Sunday from the last peak of 3,990.5 on Nov. 22.
In that same time period, the state’s rolling average of daily deaths was 41.3 and then bounced up and down before landing back at that same number as of Sunday.
Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
