File image of the Pima County Administration Building in downtown Tucson.
Pima County supervisors Friday voted to strengthen penalties for mask-wearing and social-distancing violations to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, but the countywide curfew will stay voluntary, except inside Tucson city limits, where a mandatory curfew ordered by city officials continues.
Supervisor Ramon Valadez says if the measures don't work, a countywide mandatory curfew is next.
"We are going to give it two weeks. If in two weeks this does not happen and we see that the voluntary curfew is not working, at that point I am prepared to call an emergency special meeting and make it mandatory," Valadez said.
The board also voted to adopt a vaccination strategy to be applied as soon as a vaccine is available, which could be as soon as mid-month.
Pima County is seeing its worst COVID-19 surge since the pandemic began. The state Department of Health Services reported 816 cases in Pima County Friday, among the 5,680 cases statewide. Dr. Theresa Cullen, the head of the Pima County Health Department, says that is putting a dire strain on local hospitals.
"[Thursday] ... there was a point in time where we had one free, publicly available ICU bed in the city, which means in the county. Today [Friday] we seem to have a little more give right now with the ICU beds, but we are increasingly concerned," Cullen said.
On Saturday, the Pima County recorded 1,232 new cases out of the 6,799 statewide, according to the Arizona Department of Health Services.
Pima County health officials dwindling hospital bed numbers mean if there is a large trauma situation, such as a school bus crash, victims of that incident could have to be sent out of the area for treatment.
"If you were to get the proverbial school bus crash, that means on those days where we just had one or two or a handful of beds, those children would have needed to be transported in all likelihood to Phoenix or even out of state,” said Dr. Francisco Garcia, the county's chief medical officer.
Christopher Conover contributed to this story.
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