What You Need to Know-Week of April 18th
The most important weekly updates for you to keep your community healthy
In this Update:
1. Urgent Updates: COVID-19 Metrics
2. All Things Vaccines: Who is recommended to get another booster dose?
3. What is community resilience and why do we need it?
1. Urgent Updates: COVID-19 Metrics
Updated as of: 04-18-2022
Weekly case, death, and hospitalization counts
| In the past week, there has been an average of: | |
| Cases per day | 397 |
| Deaths per day | 20 |
| Compared to two weeks ago: | |
| Cases per day | Decreased by 39% ↓ |
| Deaths per day | Decreased by 63% ↓ |
| Hospitalizations per day | Decreased by 19% ↓ |
See breakdown of vaccination by Arizona counties
See updated vaccine information and data in Arizona
2. All Things Vaccines: Who is recommended to get another booster dose?
Currently, those with weakened immune systems (e.g., individuals who have had organ transplants, are on immunosuppressive drugs, etc.) are already recommended to receive a second booster shot. However, while there is some evidence to suggest that vaccine effectiveness wanes after several months, experts are divided on whether the general population should be recommended to receive a fourth dose of an mRNA vaccine (or a third for those who received J&J).
In mid March, Pfizer and Moderna submitted emergency authorization requests to the Food and Drug administration (FDA). The FDA approved emergency authorizations for the following groups to receive a second booster dose of the either COVID-19 vaccine at least 4 months after receipt of a first booster dose of any authorized or approved COVID-19 vaccine.
- Individuals 50 years of age and older
- Individuals 12 years of age and older with certain kinds of immunocompromise (e.g., those who have undergone organ transplantation, or who are living with conditions that are considered to have an equivalent level of immunocompromise).
- Individuals 18 years of age and older who are immunocompromised
See FDA article for more information
It is important to note that despite expert division on whether individuals should receive a second booster dose, all experts agree that the numbers of unvaccinated or partially-vaccinated individuals is concerning and that efforts need to be focused toward the population getting one booster dose before moving on to two.
| United States | Arizona | |
| Percentage of individuals with one booster dose | 30% | 17.4% |
To put the importance of getting a booster in perspective, unvaccinated adults (18 years and older) had
- 4.9 times the risk of testing positive for COVID-19
- 29 times the risk of hospitalization from COVID-19
- 59 times the risk of dying from COVID-19
…compared to those who were fully vaccinated with a booster.
3. What is community resilience and why do we need it?
It has now been two years since the COVID-19 pandemic began. These incredibly difficult years have brought collective grief, loss, and uncertainty. And while these times have presented innumerable challenges, they have also shown extraordinary examples of resilience and opportunities to continue building resilience within our communities.
What is community resilience?
Community resilience is not a new concept; however, the pandemic has demonstrated the importance of prioritizing strengthening communities in the face of adversity. This looks different for every community, but we at AZCOVIDTXT define community resilience as utilizing community resources to reduce and recover from the impact of hardships and in order to make communities more robust to future threats to their wellbeing. Specific examples of strengthening resilience within communities can include, increasing access to health-related resources and services, changing the structures and environment to withstand more threats, engaging and prioritizing vulnerable or marginalized groups, and increasing community social connections and collaboration.
Why is this important?
Climate change and other social, political, and economic drivers will create more frequent “shocks” to our current systems. More resilient communities (e.g., those that are more informed, more socially connected, and have access to resources) are more quickly able to overcome challenges and return to “normal” after experiencing disaster or hardships. Planning ahead to develop higher levels of resilience is important and we know more of where to start due to the pandemic.
Through our platform, AZCOVIDTXT hopes to contribute to building community resilience by incorporating health information on emerging health topics beyond COVID-19 to our users.
If you would like to learn more about this and other topics related to COVID-19 in Arizona, please complete next week’s AZCOVIDTXT survey that you will receive via text in about a week.