Arizona’s latest number of daily new COVID-19 cases appears extraordinarily high only because of a lag in reporting over the Christmas holiday.
The state coronavirus dashboard reported 7,641 new confirmed cases but no deaths Monday.
This comes after a tally of only 344 cases and no deaths a day earlier.
A state Department of Health Services spokesman says no virus data was processed on Christmas Day.
That’s why the number of cases on Sunday was so low.
The daily case counts will likely be high for the next few days as the dashboard catches up. Arizona has seen 1,362,693 cases and 23,982 deaths since the pandemic started.
Just under 55% of the state’s residents have been fully vaccinated. All Arizona counties remain in high community transmission along with 85 percent of the U-S.