COVID-19 community levels: 4/28/2022
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, all of our synod’s counties are low level: Apache, 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 April 22
Coronavirus cases are rising again in the United States after a precipitous fall from their January peak.
Cases have increased in a majority of states and territories during the past two weeks, but the inclines are sharpest in the Northeast and Midwest. In Michigan and New Hampshire, cases have more than doubled since the start of the month.
Experts believe that two new subvariantsmay be contributing to this growth. Both evolved from the BA.2 subvariant, a strain known to be highly contagious.
The average number of reported cases announced per day in the U.S. remains at its lowest level since the summer of 2021. Still, the prevalence of home tests, which often go unreported in official tallies, suggests that the current volume of cases is likely an undercount.
Hospitalizations also remain low. On average, around 15,000 people are in American hospitals with the coronavirus each day — a figure comparable only to the earliest weeks of the pandemic.
Deaths in the pandemic, which are expected to reach 1 million in the United States in the coming weeks, continue to decline. Fewer than 400 coronavirus deaths are currently being reported each day, a decrease of more than 30 percent in the past two weeks.