Arizona Public Radio | Your Source for NPR News
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Arizona doctors group: COVID 'buckling' health care system

The Pfizer vaccine for COVID-19 is administered at the Arizona Department of Health Services State Laboratory in Phoenix, Dec. 16, 2020. The Arizona Medical Association on Friday, Jan. 14, 2022, pleaded with residents to get vaccinated and boosted and take other protective steps against COVID-19, saying that the state's health care system "is buckling under the weight" of the pandemic's current wave.
AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File
The Pfizer vaccine for COVID-19 is administered at the Arizona Department of Health Services State Laboratory in Phoenix, Dec. 16, 2020. The Arizona Medical Association on Friday, Jan. 14, 2022, pleaded with residents to get vaccinated and boosted and take other protective steps against COVID-19, saying that the state's health care system "is buckling under the weight" of the pandemic's current wave.

The Arizona Medical Association is pleading with residents to get vaccinated and boosted and take other protective steps against COVID-19, saying that the state’s health care system “is buckling under the weight” of the current surge.

The physician groups' president said Friday that experts forecast the surge hasn't peaked and she said the state's health care system “cannot take much more."

The association said patients “could inevitably be turned away, unable to find the care they so desperately need.”

Arizona’s seven-day rolling average of daily new cases has quintupled in the past two weeks.

State health officials Friday reported nearly 20,300 new known cases, the highest number yet reported during the pandemic in Arizona. They also reported 66 additional deaths statewide.

Arizona’s total COVID deaths surpassed 25,000 on Thursday.