COVID-19 community levels: 2/2/2023
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.
All of our synod’s counties are at at low levels: Apache, Clark, Cochise, Coconino, Gila, Graham, Greenlee, La Paz, Maricopa, Mohave, Navajo, Nye, Pima, Pinal, Santa Cruz, Washington, Yavapai, 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 January 26
Hospitalizations and reported cases are decreasing in all but a few states and territories. At the national level, both figures are down by around 25 percent in the past two weeks.
The West is faring particularly well, with states like Montana and Utah seeing some of their lowest-ever case and hospitalization rates.
Deaths have not seen the same improvement. Many states now report death data in weekly batches, which can make daily trends fickle. But the average number of deaths announced each day has remained at or above 500 for most of January — a troublingly high figure that is about double the number of daily deaths typically seen in a bad flu season.
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.