COVID-19 is now 'a common respiratory illness,' Arizona health officials say

Arizona health officials this week scaled back the state's COVID-19 dashboard and declared the disease "a common respiratory illness."

Arizona's dashboard will no longer include COVID-19 cases by ZIP code, vaccinations by ZIP code, or a tally of COVID-19 cases in congregate settings such as nursing homes and assisted living facilities. The updated dashboard also no longer includes a death tally that calculates deaths since the onset of the pandemic. Rather, it gives a tally of deaths per year, plus a three-year average and does the same for hospitalizations.

Starting Oct. 11, the state will be adding COVID-19 to its regular reporting by week on the prevalence of influenza and RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus.

The changes were expected and were among a series of pandemic-era practices that have either ended or been drastically reduced in scope. Officials with the Arizona Department of Health Services say they haven't completed an Arizona COVID-19 report, but it's something they are considering. Some public health experts say such a report could serve as a guide through any future pandemics that the state faces.

"I think all of us are burned out on COVID-19 to some extent, but it was such a unique time and the lessons learned I think were very important," said Dr. Joe Gerald, an associate professor of health policy at the University of Arizona's Mel & Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health.

Looking back on Arizona's response to COVID-19 could help streamline future responses, ensure the state is better prepared to "avoid some of the confusion and missteps that happened early in our pandemic response," and be a guide for future public health leaders, Gerald said. It would be helpful to address approaches to infrastructure, surveillance, schools and mass vaccinations, he said.

State health officials say they have discussed doing a COVID-19 report "to help highlight the overall picture of what happened," but to date there is "no timeline for creating that report," state Health Department spokesperson Tom Herrmannwrote in an email.

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Will Humble, who is executive director of the Arizona Public Health Association, reviewed the updated dashboard and said the changes appear to be in line with what COVID-19 has become, a common respiratory virus like RSV or the flu. He liked that there are tabs, including one marked "severity," that allow users to track death and hospitalization trends. The tabs include a "weekly summary" and "year-by-year trends," too.

Like the flu and RSV, COVID-19 is still a virus that can be fatal, though the numbers are nothing like they once were at the height of the pandemic. Arizona has reported 14,042 hospitalizations for COVID-19 so far this year, and 1,385 deaths. The number of deaths reported for the week ending Sept. 23 was 13, which is 91% below the three-year COVID-19 average for that week, state data shows.

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Gerald said the dashboard changes "seem appropriate," though he's concerned about the state ending tracking of COVID-19 in congregate settings, "not so much from a population perspective, but infection control practices in long-term care facilities is important," he said.

"This population is uniquely vulnerable, and transparency of reporting could be an important check to ensure long-term care facilities remain vigilant in protecting their residents," he said. "Reporting from long-term care facilities and having that publicly available may provide incentives that wouldn't otherwise exist to ensure those facilities continue to do what's necessary and what they can do to maintain the safety of their residents."

The updated dashboard includes COVID-19 deaths by age and shows that 87% of the COVID-19 deaths this year occurred in people ages 65 and older.

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While the Arizona COVID-19 dashboard never included reporting COVID-19 outbreaks in hospitals, Gerald said that data would be helpful, too, because hospitals are a potential source for the spread of infection if infection control practices are not diligently followed. Also, as in long-term care facilities, hospitalized patients are more vulnerable to COVID-19 than healthy people living in the community, he said.

"Some transparency in that particular setting might provide some external incentive for hospitals to maintain diligence," Gerald said.

Prior to the Oct. 4 update, the state's COVID-19 dashboard listed more than 33,500 deaths from COVID-19 since the onset of the pandemic. That number is no longer on the website and Herrmann suggested using the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention COVID-19 tracker, which uses a more conservative definition of a COVID-19 death than the state's real-time surveillance did.

The CDC data says that Arizona has had 29,771 COVID-19 deaths since the onset of the pandemic in March 2020. The federal agency says that through Sept. 30, Arizona ranks 16th in the country for its rate of COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 people. Arizona's rate is 325.4 per 100,000 people and the national average is 286.4 deaths per 100,000 people. Mississippi has the highest rate and Hawaii has the lowest, per the CDC.

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Arizona had several severe waves of COVID-19, and a federal analysis says Arizonans lost 2.5 years of life expectancy between 2019 and 2020, which was worse than the average U.S. drop of 1.8 years of life lost during that same time period.

Reach health care reporter Stephanie Innes at Stephanie.Innes@gannett.com or at 602-444-8369. Follow her on X, formerly known as Twitter: @stephanieinnes.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Scaled-back COVID-19 dashboard marks end of difficult era for Arizona