Maricopa County

Marcy Flanagan

The state Department of Health Services reported another 822 new cases of COVID-19 Nov. 30, though Monday numbers often lag. Arizona is now approaching 327,000 known cases of the virus since the start of the pandemic. And more than 6,600 people have now died from COVID-19 in our state — five in the past 24 hours.

On Nov. 27, the COVID Modeling Team at the University of Arizona sent a letter to the state’s Department of Health Services recommending a three week stay-at-home quarantine and a statewide mask mandate to mitigate the latest spike.

They said ignoring such measures would be like “facing a major forest fire without evacuation orders.”

At the same time, the head of the state’s largest hospital system is warning that they’ll surpass their bed capacity by Dec. 4. And Arizona State University is predicting that without more public health measures, holiday gatherings are likely to cause hundreds more deaths by February.

The Show spoke more about these numbers and the impending crisis we are facing with Maricopa County’s Public Health Director Marcy Flanagan.

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