UArizona COVID Update

March 2, 2021

Community Relations

Headlines

Next week will be another big week for vaccine distribution in Pima County with news that our POD will receive 16,380 doses and Pima County Health Dept will receive 24,000 doses for a total of 40,380 doses. This is more than any other week to date.
The UA vaccine distribution site (map) is now running from 10a – 10p, 7 days a week. Over 30,000 doses have been delivered at UA to date. Overall in Pima County 176,306 people, 16.9%, have received at least one dose of vaccine.
Appointments at the UA opened last Tuesday through the state system and filled quickly. More will open in the coming days. The State is releasing a few weeks of appointments at a time right now so they can adjust for changes in vaccine supply. Currently they have only released appointments at the UA POD through next week. Additional appointments beginning March 7 should be coming available soon. All eligible people can create a state account now at podvaccine.azdhs.gov, so they are ready to make an appointment when they are again available. Those without computer access can call 1-844-542-8201 for assistance or to make an appointment.
Our College of Medicine in Tucson has put together an incredible line-up of nation and international experts to discuss how we prepare for and respond to coming pandemic threats. Please help spread the word about this March 23-24 virtual symposium.

Cases (from UA dashboard) https://covid19.arizona.edu/dashboard

Our case numbers remain extremely low. Over the past 10 days – only 34 new cases out of 19,213 tests, .2% positivity rate.
Pima County’s overall positivity rate remains 12.6%.

Of the 19,213 tests administered in the past 10 days, 9,856 have been to off-campus students, .3% positivity rate
On-campus students, positivity rate 0.1%
Employees – 1 positive over the past 10 days, out of 3,453 tests, 0.0% positivity rate. Much of our workforce continues to work remotely.
192,452 tests total
As this graph demonstrates, record numbers of students are being tested:

The Rt in the 85719 zip code is .72. Pima County’s Rt is .58, and Arizona’s is .67. We keep a close eye on this data, despite knowing that our zip code encompasses far more than just the university. I heard one of our experts explain this week that what these numbers are telling us is that there is a leveling off of infections. The Rt number may go up and down now, but as long as it is below 1 we are doing well.

Isolation Capacity