- Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego said Sunday she felt the federal government was “declaring victory while we are still in crisis mode.”
- Gallego also blamed the significant increase in Arizona cases of the new coronavirus in the decision to reopen businesses in the state “too soon.”
- Arizona has had the highest infection rate per capita of any US state in the past seven days, according to the Harvard Global Health Institute.
- Visit the Business Insider home page for more stories.
Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego said Sunday that the state of Arizona opened too quickly and criticized the federal government’s response as Arizona struggles against the highest infection rate per capita in the United States.
“We open too early in Arizona,” Gallego told Martha Raddatz during a Sunday appearance on ABC’s “This Week.” “We were one of the last states to stay home and one of the first to re-emerge. And we re-emerged from zero to sixty.”
Gallego, a Democrat in office since 2019, attributed the increase, in part, to “crowded nightclubs that give out free champagne” and that don’t require face masks.
“I think that when the nightclubs were open, he sent the signal that we had defeated COVID again and, obviously, that is not the case,” Gallego said.
In late June, Republican Arizona Governor Doug Ducey ordered bars, cinemas, gyms and water parks to be closed after they were allowed to reopen, AZ Central reported.
According to data analyzed by the Harvard Global Health Institute, Arizona currently has the highest per capita rate of new daily COVID-19 infections in the past seven days with 49.9 people in the state testing positive for every 100,000 people in Arizona.
Gallego added: “Our young people ages 20 to 44, who are my own demographic, really led the blast, and we have seen tremendous growth in that area. We are seeing a lot of people go to big family gatherings and infect their family members.” .
As Business Insider’s Holly Secon previously reported, young adults are the source of many of the new cases in high-growth states, including Arizona, Florida, and Texas.
According to the Arizona Department of Health, there have been more than 98,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the state and 1,809 deaths. By far the most affected county in Arizona is Maricopa County, home to the city of Phoenix, which is the state capital, with at least 62,296 cases reported.
On Sunday, the health department reported 3,536 new cases of the new coronavirus days after it reported its 4,878 new cases on Wednesday. According to state data, just 11% of tests administered in Arizona have tested positive since the pandemic hit the state.
—This week (@ThisWeekABC) July 5, 2020
Gallego said some people are waiting 8 hours to be tested for the virus.
Gallego said the state was struggling to administer the COVID-19 tests and that some people in the state had waited up to eight hours to be tested for the virus. He called the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to assist the state in its testing efforts.
“They told us that they are moving away from that, which seems to be declaring victory while we are still in crisis mode,” he said.
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the state of Arizona had the fourth highest number of recently reported coronavirus infections in the past week, ranking it only behind Florida, California and Texas.
The Phoenix mayor also noted the president’s messages about the masks and his decision to hold a face-to-face campaign rally in Phoenix in late June as continuing problems amid the rise of the state.
“President Trump was in my community, he chose not to wear a mask, and he is having big events while trying to pressure people to stay home and events with more than 10 people to be dangerous according to the Centers for Disease Control, “he said in” This Week. “
