COVID-19 community levels: 12/28/2022
Note: our updates can be a week behind due to our news cycle overlapping with Thursday updates. View the latest CDC and NYTimes updates here.
COVID-19 Community Levels is a tool to help communities decide what prevention steps to take based on the latest data.
According to the CDC’s COVID-19 Community Levels, there are no longer any low-level counties in our synod.
Apache is our synod’s sole high level county.
Medium level counties include Apache, Clark, Coconino, Gila, Maricopa, Mohave, Navajo, Nye, Pinal, Washington, Yavapai, and Yuma.
Low level counties are Cochise, Graham, Greenlee, La Paz, Pima, Santa Cruz, and Yuma.
At all levels including the low level, prevention steps include:
Stay up to date with COVID-19 vaccines
Get tested if you have symptoms
At the medium level, if you are at high risk for severe illness, talk to your healthcare provider about whether you need to wear a mask and take other precautions.
At the high level, wear a mask indoors in public. Additional precautions may be needed for people at high risk for severe illness.
Levels can be low, medium, or high and are determined by looking at hospital beds being used, hospital admissions, and the total number of new COVID-19 cases in an area.
State of the virus
Update for December 22
Going into Christmas weekend, the key measures of the pandemic are no longer rising like they were in early December. Cases have been roughly flat nationally for the past week, and hospitalizations have begun to level off after a month of consistent growth.
Cases are rising in some states, however, and the Northeast remains a troubling hotspot. At a time of extensive holiday gatherings and lagging vaccine uptake, there are reasons to suspect that the current leveling off could be short-lived.
Case and death counts may be artificially low in the coming days as the officials who are tracking those numbers take time off for Christmas and New Year's. Hospitalization data is typically not subject to holiday reporting breaks and therefore should remain reliable.
How to read Covid data now
Higher test positivity rates are a sign that many infections are not reported — even if they are tested for at home. This results in a more severe undercount of cases. The number of hospitalized patients with Covid is a more reliable measure because testing is more consistent in hospitals. Read more about the data.