COVID-19 community levels: 5/5/2022
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 May 3
Reports of new coronavirus cases have doubled in the past month as Omicron subvariants have spread across the country.
Cases are increasing in all but four states and territories, and in more than a dozen, the daily case average is twice as high today as it was two weeks ago. Despite this rapid growth, the virus's true spread is believed to be even greater, since many infections go uncounted in official case reports.
Hospitalizations have also risen in recent weeks, though more modestly than cases. Just over 17,000 people are in American hospitals with the coronavirus each day, an increase of 16 percent since mid-April.
Still, the surge so far appears milder than the waves that preceded it. Cases remain well below the levels seen during the Delta and Omicron surges late last year, and fewer coronavirus patients are in intensive care today than at any point since the pandemic's earliest days.
Coronavirus deaths in the United States are expected to reach 1 million in the coming weeks, but for now, daily death reports continue to decline. Fewer than 350 deaths are currently being announced each day, a decrease of more than 20 percent in the past two weeks.