Arizona reports 5,236 more COVID cases; hospitalizations up

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PHOENIX (AP) - Arizona on Friday reported over 5,000 additional confirmed COVID-19 cases as virus-related hospitalizations continued to rise.

The 5,236 additional cases and 14 deaths reported Friday by the Department of Health Services’ coronavirus dashboard raised the state’s pandemic totals to 1,282,191 cases and 22,397 deaths.

As of Monday, 2,714 virus patients occupied inpatient rooms in hospitals statewide, the most since last February during last winter’s surge.

Although current virus-related hospitalizations are only about half the peak seen last January, hospitals overall are just as full as during the worst of the winter surge because more non-COVID-19 patients are currently hospitalized.

Only 5% of inpatient beds were not occupied as of Thursday, according to the dashboard.

According to Johns Hopkins University data, Arizona’s seven-day rolling average of daily new cases dropped from 3,660.9 on Nov. 17 to 3,051.1 on Wednesday. However, that end point occurred before the state reported 4,012 cases on Thursday and Friday’s even larger figure.

The rolling average of daily deaths declined from 36.6 on Nov. 17 to 30 on Wednesday.