Current print subscribers can create a free account by clicking here
Otherwise, follow the link below to join.
To Our Valued Readers –
Visitors to our website will be limited to five stories per month unless they opt to subscribe. The five stories do not include our exclusive content written by our journalists.
For $6.99, less than 20 cents a day, digital subscribers will receive unlimited access to YourValley.net, including exclusive content from our newsroom and access to our Daily Independent e-edition.
Our commitment to balanced, fair reporting and local coverage provides insight and perspective not found anywhere else.
Your financial commitment will help to preserve the kind of honest journalism produced by our reporters and editors. We trust you agree that independent journalism is an essential component of our democracy. Please click here to subscribe.
Health officials are reporting new numbers of COVID-19 cases across Arizona every day, broken down by each county.
In Maricopa County, there have been 900 positive cases of the infectious novel virus.
A reader wrote to the Independent asking, what is the breakdown of cases by city?
Unfortunately, this information is not available for public consumption.
Maricopa County Public Health Spokesperson Jeanene Fowler says it’s not available because it would create a false sense of security, and testing across each city has not been uniform.
Before speaking to Ms. Fowler, I first contacted officials at both the City of Scottsdale and the Town of Paradise Valley, the two communities I cover intimately.
Scottsdale spokesperson Kelly Corsette said because the county is not tracking cases by municipality, the City of Scottsdale did not have access to the number of positive cases there.
Paradise Valley Town Manager Jill Keimach said, “The Town of Paradise Valley can not independently collect or validate COVID-19 data and we do not have data on the number of cases by local jurisdiction, only by county.”
Ms. Fowler says officials knows definitively that COVID-19 is widespread in Maricopa County and all of the cities and towns are impacted.
“Public Health releases data to the public so that residents are able to make good decisions about their health. There are a few reasons why Public Health has concerns with releasing city-by-city information of COVID-19 cases and does not believe it will help residents make an informed decision about their health,” Ms. Fowler said.
First, people may have a false sense of security, she said.
“Residents live in one city and often travel to other cities for work, grocery shopping and healthcare. By releasing the city of residence of each positive case, it remains unclear where the person may have been exposed to the disease,” Ms. Fowler explained.
Secondly, she says testing has not been uniform across the community.
“If more testing is done in any one city, it may appear that there is more disease occurring in one city over another, when actually, there is just more testing,” she said. “What we know for sure is that the COVID-19 is widespread in Maricopa County and all of our cities and towns are impacted.”
Melissa Rosequist Managing Editor | East Valley @mrosequist_
I first started my journalism portfolio at the age of 15 while in high school before going on to study at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communications. Being in the journalism field is the only professional avenue I was ever interested in, and have worked hard covering topics from school boards to hard news while working for the Independent, where I have been awarded for my reporting.