Vice President Mike Pence said Wednesday that Arizona appears to be flattening the curve of COVID-19, although state numbers suggest a more troubling picture of ever-rising cases and hospitalizations.  

Pence said “early indications” show improving metrics in Arizona, Florida and Texas, three states that have been hot spots for COVID-19 surges over the past several weeks.  

He pointed to Arizona’s “flattening” of the percentage of positive tests and to “declining numbers” of emergency room visits as promising signs for the state. Recent data from the Arizona Department of Health Services do not yet reflect declining trends in those areas.  

“We believe the takeaway from this for every American, particularly in those states that are impacted, is: Keep doing what you’re doing, because we’re starting to see the first indications that, as we were able to do in the Northeast, as we were able to do in New Orleans and Louisiana and Michigan and other places around the country, we’re putting into practice those mitigation efforts and we’re beginning to see indications that they are having a good effect,” Pence said.  

The optimistic picture presented at the White House coronavirus task force briefing painted over recent, more concerning data in Arizona. 

According to state data, the percentage of positive tests has been increasing in recent weeks and emergency room visits hit a record high Tuesday. Other hospital metrics, such as inpatient beds, ICU beds and ventilators in use have also been breaking daily records for several weeks now.

These trends have prompted state officials to urge redoubled individual efforts to stay home, wear masks and help slow the spread of COVID-19 in a state with one of the worst outbreaks in the country. Last week, Gov. Doug Ducey ordered closures of places such as bars and gyms.

Pence and Dr. Deborah Birx of the White House coronavirus task force visited Arizona last week for discussions with Ducey and health care teams about the state’s COVID-19 surge. 

Percentage of positive tests trends 

A key COVID-19 metric for understanding testing and spread is the percentage of tests that are positive. It’s a telling data point for how widespread the virus is and whether testing is doing enough, and a metric that Pence and Birx pointed to on Wednesday.

“The seven-day average is showing some flattening, and we find that encouraging,” Birx said. “We’re hoping that it heralds a stability in Arizona of at least reaching a plateau in their curve.” 

State data shows this metric has been increasing week-over-week, and it’s too soon to know whether it’s been stable over the past two weeks, as Birx’s chart seemed to show. That’s because not all the test results from last week are in yet, so the positive number percentage for last week is not a complete picture. 

More than one in four COVID-19 tests in Arizona are coming back positive, the highest percentage in the country, according to Johns Hopkins University. 

A high percentage of positive tests means that testing is limited and may only be reaching those who are the most sick, and that the virus is widespread and impacting wide swaths of people.

A low percentage of positive tests means testing is widespread, hitting those with and without symptoms, or that the virus is losing its spread in a community. 

During the first week in May, just 5% of the week’s 35,740 COVID-19 diagnostic tests came back positive, according to the Arizona Department of Health Services. 

This percentage of positive tests out of all tests conducted in a week has risen steadily week by week since early May, from 5% the first week, to 6%, 9%, 12%, 14%, 18% to 21%. This has been the case even with dramatic test capacity increases, the opposite of what would be expected from testing a much larger number and broader range of people.

Two weeks ago, 21% of the 110,513 tests conducted were positive. Of the limited results available for last week, the metric is at 22%, the state dashboard shows, although that is likely to change since only 67,437 test results have been recorded. 

So there may be “some flattening,” as Birx said, but another week or two will be needed to know for sure.

And, even if the percent of positive tests is flattening, it’s still flattening at the highest percentage in the country, meaning Arizona is not doing enough testing and the virus is still widespread in communities. 

“The percent positives are going up considerably and we hovering in sort of the 20% range … which is not a safe place to be,” said Joshua LaBaer, director of the Arizona State University Biodesign Institute and leader of the university’s COVID-19 research efforts.

“Clearly, what we want to do is get more testing done so that we can identify, hopefully that we’ll find more negatives, and it’ll also help us identify where the positives are so we can get those people isolated.” 

Hospital metrics in Arizona  

Pence said at the Wednesday briefing that he was hearing good things from Arizona hospitals.  

“We are focused on the states where more than half of the new cases have arisen — Texas, Arizona, Florida and California — and have received encouraging reports even through this morning. Strong supplies of PPE in hospitals; hospital capacity remains strong.” 

Arizona hospital data posted by the state Wednesday morning was not particularly encouraging, but rather continued trends of decreasing hospital capacity seen in recent weeks.  

Birx presented a graph of emergency room visits that showed a downward trend this week. 

“We find that encouraging,” she said. 

But emergency room visits shot up again Tuesday (her graph ended on Monday), hitting a record high of 2,008 suspected and confirmed COVID-19 patients seen, passing the previous high of 1,847 visits on Thursday and jumping high from Monday’s 1,385 emergency room visits, according to hospital data reported to the state.

Emergency department visits had been lower between Thursday and Tuesday — in the range of 1,300 to 1,465 daily visits — but they were still part of an upward trend of daily visits, according to state data.

Other hospital-reported metrics such as inpatient beds, ICU beds and ventilators in use have increased steadily daily since early June. All again hit records on Tuesday. 

As cases and hospitalizations rise, some hospitals have begun pausing elective surgeries to ensure there’s enough capacity to handle the influx of patients.

Several hospitals in the Banner Health and Dignity Health systems have activated surge plans to increase capacity for patients. The state officially activated crisis standards of care last week after a recommendation from an advisory group and at the urging of doctors. 

Wednesday’s state data shows 85% of all current inpatient beds and 91% of ICU beds were in use, which includes people being treated for COVID-19 and other patients. Hospital capacity varies among counties and hospitals throughout the state.

The federal government aims to deploy more than 1,070 medical personnel in Arizona, Texas, California and Florida, which address one need that hospitals have highlighted, Pence said Wednesday.

During his visit to Phoenix last week, Pence announced he would provide 500 medical personnel to Arizona after Ducey requested extra help.

Arizona has seen rapid daily case increases for weeks, with often more than 3,000 cases reported each day.

On Monday, known cases of COVID-19 in Arizona passed 100,000, just over five months since the first case was identified in Maricopa County in late January and just over two weeks since the case count passed 50,000.

Reach the reporter at [email protected] or at 602-444-4282. Follow her on Twitter @alisteinbach.

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