Over the last week, Arizona's explosion in coronavirus cases has made it the No. 1 global pandemic hot spot.
According to the New York Times, Arizona topped the list of states and countries with a high rate of virus spread than any other state or country.
The newspaper's research, which ranks countries and states with the most new confirmed coronavirus cases over the past week -- adjusted for population -- lists Arizona No. 1, with about 3,300 cases per 1 million in population. Florida (2,700) and South Carolina (2,300) follow. Bahrain (2,200) is No. 4.
In response to the ranking, a spokesperson for Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey Wednesday morning said the New York Times analysis lacks context, citing testing statistics from other countries -- including Brazil.
While the testing disparities may explain differences in comparisons to other countries, Arizona is still among the states with the most new cases per capita in the U.S.
Here is the full response from Ducey spokesperson Patrick Ptak:
Testing - if you aren’t testing, it doesn’t mean you have fewer cases, just that you know less about them.
For example, AZ has done 8,615 test per 100K. Brazil has done 1,435.
Arizona has been working hard to increase testing, with more on the way.
Daily Testing - In fact, Brazil is currently testing 0.025 per 100k people per day. By contrast, yesterday, Arizona reported 12,212 tests (and this was far from our highest day in the past week) which works out to 167 tests per 100K on that one day alone.
Positivity rate – both Brazil (33%) and Peru (39.9%) have a higher positivity rate than Arizona. This, in combination with their much lower testing, suggests the outbreaks in these places are much larger than is being reported. Likewise, New York’s positivity rate during its peak was more than double what AZ is seeing now.
None of this is to diminish the situation in Arizona – it is serious and the State is working to address it, but this reporting is misleading at best.
This article was written by Phil Villarreal for KGUN.
