Covid-19 exposure risk: 2/17/2022

Fully vaccinated rates remain at roughly 60% of our synod’s population.

All counties are at extremely high levels of risk for unvaccinated people. Extremely high risk counties for unvaccinated people in our synod include Apache, Clark, Cochise, Coconino, Gila, Graham, Greenlee, La Paz, Maricopa, Mohave, Navajo, Pima, Pinal, Santa Cruz, Washington, Yavapai, and Yuma counties.

State of the virus

• New coronavirus cases have declined more than 80 percent from their peak in mid-January. Still, daily case reports remain well above 100,000 per day.

• About 85,000 people with the virus are hospitalized nationwide. This number, as well as the number of Covid-19 patients in intensive care units, has fallen by more than 30 percent in the last two weeks.

• After several weeks of rapid growth, death reports have also begun a modest downturn. Around 2,300 deaths are reported each day, a decrease of more than 10 percent since the start of the month.

• Cases are currently declining in every U.S. state. In all but four states, reports of new infections are down by 50 percent or more in the last two weeks.

• West Virginia, Alabama and Kentucky have the country’s highest numbers of recent hospitalizations. Those states have vaccination rates well below the national average.

The New York Times published county-specific guidance for common activities to help you lower your personal risk of getting Covid-19 and to help you protect your community. This advice was developed with public health experts at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Resolve to Save Lives, an initiative of Vital Strategies.

“Providing transparent, real time information about what people’s risks are is empowering,” said Dr. Tom Frieden, who is a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the president and C.E.O. of Resolve to Save Lives. “You want to know how hard it’s raining Covid.”