Last week, I had the privilege of being among a group of healthcare workers receiving some of the first COVID-19 vaccinations in Arizona. This was during an event held at ADHS. I was inspired by the reasons these professionals gave for wanting to get vaccinated right away, whether it was keeping patients, family, and friends [...]
On Friday, December 11, the FDA announced its approval of an emergency use authorization for Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) met on Saturday, December 12, and recommended the vaccine for people age 16 and older. This week, the first doses of COVID-19 vaccine arrived in Arizona. The first vaccine clinics [...]
Throughout the COVID-19 response, ADHS has continually reevaluated how we are collecting, analyzing, and presenting COVID-19 data for cases, hospitalizations, and laboratory tests. As the COVID-19 testing landscape changes, with new tests, new laboratories, and new guidance on who should be tested, and as data come to ADHS in new ways, we have examined whether [...]
Since our COVID-19 response began in January, our epidemiologists have been reviewing and analyzing COVID-19 data. Our data reporting regarding this novel disease continues to evolve as we collect additional data and learn about which data elements are most useful to understand how COVID-19 is impacting Arizonans. Over the course of this response, our Data [...]
There are many impacts that the holidays can have on COVID-19 in Arizona. With people traveling and gathering with loved ones to celebrate Thanksgiving, we anticipate the cases and the need for hospitalizations to continue to increase over the next few weeks. We also know that the holidays can have an impact on our public [...]
Public health utilizes several surveillance tools to monitor the spread of disease throughout a community. These tools, like case reporting, laboratory reporting, and syndromic surveillance, generate many of the data points that are displayed on our COVID-19 data dashboard. These surveillance tools are also used to monitor the metrics we use to set business reopening [...]
The arrival of winter visitors is a welcome indication of cooler days ahead. If you are a returning visitor or discovering our state’s cooler months, welcome! We want you to be safe and healthy while you're here, and we need your help to protect everyone this winter. With COVID-19 still active in our communities, I [...]
Aside from a child’s home, no other setting has more influence on a child’s health and well-being than their school. Schools provide education instruction, support the development of social and emotional skills, facilitate physical activity, and address nutrition needs. On October 22, ADHS released updates to the school benchmarks. For details, visit my blog post [...]
As a mom of young kids attending in-person learning, nothing is more important to me than the health of our kids and the safety of our schools. Close coordination across the public health system and partnering with our education experts is critical to an effective response and safely returning kids to the classroom. The Arizona [...]
Global and national COVID-19 cases have increased over the last several weeks, and now that trend is occurring in Arizona, too. While our state is not currently experiencing a surge to the degree other locations are experiencing right now, we have recently seen a shift of COVID-19 spread in the state in the wrong direction. [...]
