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, we have one medium level county: Apache.

Low level counties are Clark, Cochise, Coconino, Gila, Graham, Greenlee, La Paz, Maricopa, Mohave, Navajo, 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 March 24

• Reports of new coronavirus cases in the United States are still declining, though the pace of improvement has slowed in recent days.

• Several states in the Northeast and the South have seen cases increase over the past two weeks as the BA.2 subvariant has emerged. In New York, Connecticut and Arkansas, cases are up by more than 20 percent.

• Still, most states continue to see sustained declines, and cases remain at their lowest levels nationally since last July.

• Coronavirus hospitalizations also continue to fall. In the past two weeks, hospitalizations have decreased by 39 percent to around 20,000 per day.

• Fewer than 1,000 deaths are currently being reported each day, the lowest daily average since before Omicron took hold. More than 970,000 deaths have been attributed to Covid-19 in the United States.