COVID-19 in Arizona: Ducey extends bar, gym closures; passes on mask mandate
Brian Cano Sr./Cronkite News
PHOENIX – Gyms, bars, nightclubs and more will remain closed past next week as the state continues to fight a disease that is “highly contagious and in every part of the state,” Gov. Doug Ducey said Thursday.
But even as he urged people to stay home and practice safe hygiene, Ducey declined to require the use of masks statewide, instead unveiling an advertising campaign, “Tougher than COVID,” that urges people to wear masks voluntarily.
“I’d ask you to continue to be vigilant,” Ducey said. “Whether you’re in Phoenix or Tucson or a rural area, the virus is still present.”
The comments came in a wide-ranging news conference in which the governor tried to walk a tightrope between touting improvements in the state’s number of COVID-19 cases and warning residents that the virus still presents a threat and people need to brace for what Ducey called a new normal.
They also came the same day that the state crossed the 3,000 threshold for deaths. The Arizona Department of Health Services reported 84 deaths Thursday to bring the total for the state to 3,063.
“There’s no victory lap today, there’s no celebration,” said Ducey, who extended condolences to the thousands of Arizona families who have lost a loved one to the disease.
Ducey said that the state is seeing a flattening or slight decrease in what he called critical measurements of the disease, including the number of hospital beds, intensive care beds and ventilators in use.
He said the “R-naught” number – the rate at which one person with the disease spreads it to another – has remained below the key threshold of 1.0 since July 15, and is currently at 0.98.
“To my eye, Arizona is the greenest state in the nation,” Ducey said, as he displayed maps from various news organizations that showed the change in the number of cases, with green being the best.
Even with that, however, Ducey announced an extension of his June order that closed bars, gyms, movie theaters, water parks and tubing operations through July 27. He did not put an end date on the closure order, which he called part of the “unhappy, but necessary business of breaking up large adult gatherings,” but said it would be reviewed every two weeks.
Ducey and Dr. Cara Christ, the director of the Arizona Department of Health Services, also announced plans to expand testing in the state and improve the speed with which tests are returned. That includes an expansion of the use of a new saliva-based test developed by Arizona State University, as well as investments in more tests, more collection sites and more labs to process the results.
Christ said the state is getting help from CVS, Embry Women’s Health, Banner Health and others. The new goal with the surge testing will be to turn around test results “in 48 to 72 hours,” Ducey said.
But they also noted that current testing efforts have been hampered by spotty demand, pointing specifically to testing sites in Maryvale where turnout was just 28% of capacity.
While he repeatedly cited the state’s “safer at home” slogan, Ducey also got some backup in the persuasion department Thursday, unveiling an public service campaign designed by advertising companies in the state to help spread the message.
He played videos of an ad, in Spanish and English, that showed a boxer wrapping his fists before sparring and saying that cloth protects him and others, before looking at the camera and saying that wearing a mask “doesn’t make me feel weak.” That ad and others are expected to run on TV, social media and billboards around the state.
As of Thursday, July 23, the Arizona Department of Health Services reported 152,944 cases of COVID-19 and 3,063 deaths in the state. It said 1,037,924 tests for COVID-19 have been completed in public and private labs in Arizona, and 12.5.7% of tests have come back positive for the virus that causes the disease.
