Your best protection against COVID-19 is getting one of the safe, free, and highly effective vaccines that are widely available around Arizona. Vaccination helps prevent severe illness, hospitalization, and death from COVID-19 while helping preserve healthcare capacity for others who need it. Complementing the state’s push for vaccination are monoclonal antibody treatments approved for emergency [...]
Last month, we shared a new way the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) looks at the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines in light of rare breakthrough cases. This approach examines the difference between unvaccinated and fully vaccinated individuals when it comes to COVID-19 cases and deaths. It uses rates of an outcome among each [...]
With the recent announcement of our COVID-19 dashboard enhancements, I’d like to share some tips and tricks for getting the most out of the dashboard. Our amazing dashboard team has created the ability to view the data in all kinds of different ways, some of which I’ll summarize below. Summary page You can now go [...]
Today is the 10th annual National Disease Intervention Specialists Recognition Day. This honors healthcare professionals who are crucial in the effort to disrupt the transmission of deadly infectious diseases by connecting people who have been exposed to care and services using a method called contact tracing, which has been vital during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. [...]
Vaccines continue providing robust protection against hospitalization and death from COVID-19. But federal officials have determined that it is time for members of certain groups, including those 65 and older, to get boosters of the Pfizer vaccine if they are at least six months past their second dose. Here are some quick questions and answers [...]
Amid a wetter monsoon season than recent years, Arizona is experiencing a record high season for the West Nile virus, which transmits through mosquito bites. Through late last week, Arizona had seen 123 cases and four deaths. Nearly all of them have been in Maricopa County, where West Nile virus has been detected in record [...]
We’ve all had those times when our stomach doesn’t feel just right, often after eating. And often, that stomachache is no more than minor discomfort that lasts just a short time. Even though the American food supply is among the safest in the world, an estimated 128,000 people each year require a hospital stay because [...]
Emergencies can happen without warning. The disastrous flooding around Arizona during this monsoon reminded us of that. September – before the weather turns to winter in the high country and outdoor activities resume in the deserts – is the perfect time to prepare for disasters that can happen at any time. State and federal governments [...]
We at ADHS are pleased to have contributed to a recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report offering a new and very useful way to look at the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines in light of rare breakthrough cases among the fully vaccinated. A key takeaway from this report in the CDC’s Morbidity and [...]
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced last week that it has developed a plan to begin offering booster shots this fall for those who have received the Pfizer/Comirnaty and Moderna vaccines to protect against COVID-19. It anticipates boosters as well for those who received the Johnson & Johnson/Janssen vaccine, but that [...]
