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 Pinal.

Low level counties are Apache, Clark, Cochise, Coconino, Gila, Graham, Greenlee, La Paz, Maricopa, Mohave, Navajo, Pima, 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 April 7

• After two months of sustained declines, reports of new coronavirus cases in the United States have been generally flat in the past two weeks.

• The outlook at the state level is mixed. New virus cases have increased recently in about half of all states and territories, particularly in the Northeast where the BA.2 subvariant is widespread. But cases have decreased in the other half of the states.

• Even as case reports have leveled off some, coronavirus hospitalizations across the country have continued to decrease. Hospitalizations have fallen to an average of roughly 15,000 per day in the past two weeks, the lowest they have been since the first weeks of the coronavirus pandemic.

• Deaths also remain on the decline. Around 600 deaths from Covid are being reported each day, a decrease of more than 75 percent from the peak in February amid the Omicron surge.