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Luke Air Force Base in Glendale is lit up red on a metro Phoenix map comparing the rates of new COVID-19 infections over the past week, but the base’s public health director says the map may not paint a full picture.

New transfers to the base who test positive may not yet have an Arizona address to be reported to the state health department. In those cases, Luke uses the on-base testing facility’s ZIP code, according to Maj. David Sanders, the base’s public health flight commander.

He also is looking into whether people living in nearby family base housing, which falls into a different ZIP code, might be mixed into the base’s data.

Still, he acknowledges many young people — among the nearly 700 who live in the base’s dorms —don’t always take the pandemic as seriously as they should. 

“We have that age range that thinks they’re bulletproof. Anytime they get free time, they’re in Flagstaff or Sedona,” Sanders said. “And then next thing I know, they’re in our COVID line.”

Overall, Arizona has seen cases of the virus increasing. The state on Friday reported 4,471 new cases, the most new COVID-19 cases since July 1. 

Sleuthing through the numbers

The ZIP code that includes Luke and its on-base dorms, 85309, has seen an average of seven new cases each day for the past week. The ZIP code only has about 700 residents, giving it a rate of 96 new cases per 10,000 people.

The ZIP code across Litchfield Road, 85307, includes the base’s family housing. It has seen nearly the same amount of raw new cases, at an average of six per day over the last week. But that area has more than 11,000 residents, putting its rate at just five new cases per 10,000 people, data show.

Anyone affiliated with Luke — from other branches of the military or civilians who live in off-base housing — can get tested on base. It’s not uncommon for the base clinic’s ZIP code to be reported to the state instead of the patient’s home ZIP code, Sanders said.

Stephanie Silvera, an epidemiologist and professor of public health at Montclair State University in New Jersey, in April raised that broadly as an issue in the Arizona health department’s COVID-19 data. Overlap like that can muddy the data, she said.

“If you’re not getting good data, then you can’t make good interpretations of that data at the other end,” Silvera said.

But the Arizona Department of Health Services says more than 90% of cases in its reported data have been mapped to the patient’s address, not the testing facility’s address. 

Still, the base’s numbers reported by the state are higher than they should be, Sanders said.

How the base is handling the pandemic

On base, everyone is required to wear a mask if they can’t stay six feet apart from each other, spokesperson Sean Clements said. Individual squads can enact more strict rules if they work in closer spaces that would need more mask-wearing, he said.

If someone who lives in the dorms tests positive for COVID-19, they have to self-quarantine in the dorm, Sanders said. If they have roommates, the roommates are assigned a new dorm and also have to self-quarantine. If they were in a workspace within 48 hours of noticing symptoms, workers sanitize the workspace, he said.

Luke’s on-base housing and Arizona’s universities face some of the same challenges: Keeping young people who live in dense housing safe. Universities have done everything from keeping some rooms vacant as isolation spaces to removing or rearranging furniture in common areas.

When there is a positive case at Luke, base officials begin contact tracing and notify everyone they can find who was in contact with the infected person, Sanders said. 

Reach reporter Joshua Bowling at [email protected] or 602-444-8138. Follow him on Twitter @MrJoshuaBowling.

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