COVID-19 surge is in Mohave County; Kingman suffers 11 more deaths

KINGMAN – Mohave County Public Health Director Denise Burley updated the Mohave County Board of Supervisors on the COVID-19 situation in the county last week.

Dr. Anthony Fauci said this week he believes the “full-blown pandemic phase” of coronavirus is beginning to end. Cases are dropping nationwide and Mohave County appears to be following suit.

In its Thursday bi-weekly covid report the Mohave County Public Health Department reported 329 new confirmed cases of coronavirus had been reported since Monday at noon. The report also stated that 14 deaths had occurred since noon Monday as well.

Thursday’s covid report is down over 200 cases from Monday’s report from the county which recorded 554 covid cases.

Mohave County Public Health Director Denise Burley says that based on CDC forecasting and virus surveillance reports experts are predicting the county has passed the surge week of this current surge of covid-19 caused by the omicron variant.

However, Burley says because of the coronavirus’s “rapidly changing nature” case forecasting is not a guarantee.

After the country was reporting more than 800,000 cases of COVID-19 cases a day in mid-January, the chief medical adviser at the White House, Fauci, told the Financial Times this week that he hopes to see an end to public health restrictions in the coming months. However Fauci did say covid precautions could return at the local level if outbreaks occur.

“As we get out of the full-blown pandemic phase of covid-19, which we are certainly heading out of, these decisions will increasingly be made on a local level rather than centrally decided or mandated,” Fauci said. “There will also be more people making their own decisions on how they want to deal with the virus.”

Just like most of the rest of the U.S Mohave County reported its highest monthly total of covid cases in January which had 11,561 cases. However, experts are saying the surge in Mohave County is past its peak.

According to Burley this recent surge of covid has been “significantly higher” than previous surges that have occurred in Mohave County.

“In 2022 alone, confirmed cases surpassed the total case count from January 2021 through August 2021,” Burley said. Since Jan. 1 there have been 15,264 covid cases reported as compared to the 14,919 cases that were reported from January 2021 to August 2021.

Of the 329 new county cases reported Thursday, 175 are from Bullhead City, 96 are from Kingman, 53 are from Lake Havasu City, three are from North County and the remaining two are from areas unknown in the county.

Eleven of the new deaths are from Kingman, two are from Bullhead City and the final death is from Lake Havasu City.

The 11 local deaths were trending younger, with four logged in the 50-59 age group. There were also three local deaths in the ages 70-79, and two each ages 60-69 and 80-89.

Elsewhere in the county, there were two deaths record in the Bullhead City medical service (one each ages 50-59 and 60-60 – as well as a patient in the 80-89 age bracket from Lake Havasut City service area.

The 96 new Kingman-area cases include 39 in the age groups over 50 that have accounted for 95% of the deaths county-wide since the beginning of the pandemic.

There were 18 new cases ages 60-69, nine ages 50-58, two ages 50-59 and one ages 90-plus.

Another 21 cases involved children and teens, with 11 new cases ages 0-10 and 19 ages 11-19. There were also 13 new local cases ages 40-49, 12 ages 30-39 and 12 ages 20-29.

(Additional reporting by Miner staff and Will Katcher.)