Marcy Flanagan.
The first shipments of COVID-19 vaccine arrived in Arizona Dec. 14 with the first orders going to Pinal and Maricopa Counties to begin Phase 1A distribution on Thursday.
On Dec. 15, 3,900 vaccine doses are being sent to the Navajo Nation, where hospitalizations due to COVID-19 infection are four times higher than the national rate.
The Arizona Department of Health Services reported 4,134 new cases of COVID-19 and 64 additional deaths as of Dec. 15. In all, 7,422 people have now died from COVID-19 in our state.
Maricopa County received about 47,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine, and health care workers will start getting the vaccines this week.
Results from a serosurvey conducted across Maricopa County show that an estimated 10.7 percent of residents have detectable antibodies for COVID-19. According to a recent report, this means that approximately 470,000 people in Maricopa County likely have been infected with the virus since the pandemic began.
The 11-day study, conducted in mid-September by Maricopa County Department of Public Health (MCDPH) in partnership with Arizona State University (ASU) and Mayo Clinic, collected specimens from 260 participants in 169 households randomly selected from across the county to test for antibodies for the virus that causes COVID-19.
MCDPH and ASU worked with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to implement a method that samples a small number of households in randomly selected communities that, when combined, represent all of Maricopa County. The CDC gave MCDPH and ASU a list of 29 communities that are representative of the entire county.
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