ARIZONA NEWS
Arizona reports 117 new coronavirus deaths, with 52 from death certificates
This is a regularly updated story with the latest information, news and updates about the coronavirus and its impact in Arizona and beyond for Tuesday, July 7.
PHOENIX – The Arizona health department reported a single-day high of 117 coronavirus deaths Tuesday, but 52 were from death certificate matching.
The previous single-day high for reported deaths was July 1 with 88, but that didn’t include any death certificate cases, so it actually exceeded Tuesday’s 65 new fatalities.
Data update: Of the 117 #COVID19 deaths reported today, 52 are from death certificate matching. Read our blog about death certificate matching here: https://t.co/hAR7J2GOn6
— AZ Dept of Health (@AZDHS) July 7, 2020
The state also reported 3,653 new cases Tuesday. That brought Arizona’s totals to 105,094 cases and 1,927 fatalities.
The Arizona Department of Health Services has been providing case and testing updates on its website each morning. The dashboard includes, among other information, testing trends, updated hospital capacity and a ZIP code map of cases.
The daily reports present data after the state receives statistics and confirms them, which can lag by several days. They aren’t meant to represent the actual activity over the past 24 hours.
New cases have been increasing at a faster rate than testing has been increasing, indicating community spread of a virus that has no impact on some people and is seriously debilitating or fatal for others. Infected people who don’t show symptoms are still capable of spreading the coronavirus.
There have been more than 628,000 PCR tests given in Arizona, including 10,932 added to the total Tuesday. Of the tests processed, the positive rate was up to 13.6%. It was 13.4% on Monday, 12% on June 30, and 6.7% on May 31.
The weekly positive rate for PCR tests, which diagnose active infections, has risen every week since early May, when it was 5%. For the PCR tests given last week that have been processed, the positive rate was up to 22%.
The number of confirmed or suspected COVID-19 patients in Arizona hospitals jumped by more than 100 overnight to pandemic-high 3,356 on Monday.
In other notable hospital data from Monday related to confirmed or suspected COVID-19 patients:
- 544 were on ventilators, an increase of 11 from the previous day, which had been the highest number seen.
- 869 were in ICU beds, an increase of 30 from the previous day, which had been the highest number seen.
- 424 were discharged, 51 fewer than the record number from a day earlier.
- 111 intubations for respiratory distress were performed, five shy of the record from two days earlier.
Below are Tuesday’s latest developments about the coronavirus pandemic from around the state, country and world:
- Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez announced 27 new coronavirus cases and one additional death among the Navajo Nation.
- A testing blitz will take place Saturday at Glendale Community College. It comes as the state continues to work to ramp up coronavirus testing.
- Mesa is changing its schedule for food distribution to meet community needs during the COVID-19 pandemic to once weekly, Fridays from 7 a.m. to noon at the Mesa Convention Center.
- The Phoenix Fire Department says it is dealing with a growing number of firefighters who are contracting coronavirus.
- A judge refused to give Scottsdale-based Mountainside Fitness a temporary restraining order against Gov. Doug Ducey’s executive order to close down the state’s gyms.
- A judge refused to give Scottsdale-based Mountainside Fitness a temporary restraining order against Gov. Doug Ducey’s executive order to close down the state’s gyms.
- Data on Medicare’s COVID-19 nursing home website may be incomplete because the reporting requirements don’t reach back to the start of the pandemic.
- The personal protective gear that was in dangerously short supply during the early weeks of the coronavirus crisis in the U.S. is running low again.
