People protest the “shut down” of Arizona from the coronavirus outbreak by driving around the Capitol./screengrab
By Rob O’Dell | Arizona Republic
With Arizona and other states considering reopening their economies on May 1, health experts said the state isn’t yet doing enough COVID-19 testing or collecting good enough data to responsibly lift stay-at-home orders.
Arizona has done 51,000 tests through Saturday, a fraction of the COVID-19 tests needed to judge how widespread the outbreak is in a state this size. Measured in tests per million residents, Arizona was in the bottom 10 states nationwide last week.
And data the state provides is widely seen as inadequate. The state is missing demographic data about positive cases and deaths, its location data mixes hospitals with private residences, and the state won’t provide data about cases and deaths on Indian reservations or in nursing homes.
“It just isn’t going to work unless you have crystal clear data,” said William Haseltine, an infectious disease expert and president of the global health think tank ACCESS Health International. “If Arizona doesn’t have that they are miles away from being prepared to reopen.”
