Last week, the Arizona Senate hosted the Novel Coronavirus Southwestern Intergovernmental Committee, which heard testimony from several dubiously-credentialed health professionals on the Arizona response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This week, the National Institutes of Health released data demonstrating Arizona had a much higher rate of...
A new, highly infectious COVID-19 subvariant is growing in dominance across the country as healthcare providers relax mask mandates. In Arizona, Republicans have launched an investigation into the state's COVID-19 response, contending that it was mismanaged.
High levels of the variant XBB.1.16, or "Arcturus," have been found in Los...
A single shot of the bivalent booster will become the standard vaccination regimen for people seeking their first COVID-19 vaccination.
Only a single dose will be needed for most people, instead of the currently-recommended two doses. According to the Wall Street Journal, a second booster will be authorized for groups that are high...
Last Saturday marked the third anniversary of COVID-19 being declared a worldwide pandemic.
As the Arizona Republic points out in a retrospective, since that declaration, COVID-19 has killed more than 1.1 million Americans and 33,000 Arizonans.
There were 4,262 new cases of COVID-19 in Arizona this week with 56 new deaths related...
Arizona lawmakers made progress on several bills related to healthcare and COVID-19 this week.
Last Tuesday, the Arizona Senate Health and Human Services Committee approved HB 2474, which would prohibit schools from requiring immunizations issued by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under emergency use authorization for...
Maybe it was a lab leak after all? Or maybe not. This week the U.S. Energy Department announced that it determined that the COVID-19 pandemic most likely arise from a laboratory leak. Governor Katie Hobbs proclaims COVID-19 Memorial Day.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the announcement was made after a classified report was...
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) will allow Arizona to continue operating its own state plan for worker safety and health. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) offer insight into life without the COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE).
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an...
This week, the Arizona Department of Health Services (ADHS) is required to report 26,866 new cases of COVID-19 in Arizona, but it does not signal an unprecedented new surge.
In a blog post, the department stressed that this number comes from a single laboratory reporting cases that occurred over the course of last year. The case count...
The Arizona Senate's new Committee on Director Nominations rejected Governor Katie Hobbs's appointee for director of Arizona Department of Health Services, Dr. Theresa Cullen.
Dr. Cullen headed the Pima County Department of Public Health throughout the pandemic. Senator Jake Hoffman (R-Queen Creek), who leads the panel and the...
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) clarified some of the guidance on the termination of the public health emergency this week. Also, the Arizona State University (ASU) Biodesign Institute has created a statewide survey to better understand the paths that new COVID variants take when moving through Arizona.
The...
On Monday, the Biden administration announced that it would end the COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE) declaration. The announcement came as the U.S. House of Representatives passed two bills that would curb federal authority in pandemic response. In Arizona, legislators are pushing bills that would ban schools from requiring...
As Arizona is caught in the midst of a multi-front surge of not only COVID-19 but also influenza, with rates of COVID infections in nursing homes continuing to rise, Representative Andy Biggs (R-AZ) reintroduced legislation in Congress to curb federal oversight of the nation's pandemic response. Meanwhile, the Arizona Department of...
The super transmissible COVID-19 variant XBB.1.5 has made it to Arizona and new data from AARP demonstrates that vaccination levels in nursing homes remain troublingly low.
The presence of XBB.1.5 in Arizona is still low, but throughout the pandemic surges related to certain variants have hit Arizona slower than other states, the...
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced on Wednesday that it would extend the public health emergency (PHE) and associated waivers and flexibilities for another 90 days.
The next big deadline for the pandemic will be in 30 days, as the Biden administration pledged to give the industry 60-days notice before...
The U.S. has a new dominant COVID-19 variant, XBB.1.5, which is reportedly twenty-five times as contagious as the original strain of coronavirus. Meanwhile, seniors and people of color bear the burden of high rates of transmission and death as a result of the virus.
New research demonstrates that the death toll of COVID-19 in...
COVID-19 cases across the state are down this week, but are expected to rise following the winter holidays. The Supreme Court ruled that a Trump-era border restriction enacted due to the COVID-19 pandemic will remain in effect while the court settles the issue.
The U.S. Supreme Court allowed the controversial Title 42 to remain in...
Arizona experienced the fifth-largest drop in life expectancy in the country during the COVID-19 pandemic, and although cases have dropped this week, the surge of other winter-related airborne respiratory viruses have hospitals and over-the-counter medical supply distributors under increasing levels of stress.
On Monday, a coalition...
Arizona hospitals are buckling under the pressure of three coinciding surges in airborne illnesses COVID-19, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). This "tripledemic" is elevating the need to raise vaccination rates for both COVID and the flu, as vaccinations in key areas remain low.
While lower than last week, there were...
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has submitted its long-term COVID-19 safety standard for healthcare facilities to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review. Although the date for the plan's implementation is not set, this marks a significant step forward as lawsuits around COVID-19 safety...
Arizona cases of COVID-19 are spiking again, heralding the long-awaited winter surge warned of by experts and epidemiologists. But vaccine uptake, especially of the new bivalent booster, remains low as experts cite "vaccine fatigue" among Americans.
Tucson Mayor Regina Romero has tested positive for COVID-19 and experiencing mild...
