Oro Valley lawmaker says state’s COVID-19 numbers ‘skewed,’ don’t justify restrictions | Latest News

“The agency is refusing to release the data to me as a legislator so we can attempt to replicate their work,” he told Capitol Media Services. Instead, Finchem said, what’s produced for public consumption is “the preferred narrative from the agency.”

No one from either the governor’s office or the state health department would comment.

But Humble dismissed the contention that the real numbers are being hidden.

“I find no reason to believe that,” he said, saying there are people at the agency now who were there when he was director, prior to 2015, whose judgment he trusts.

And Humble has not been a defender of the governor, saying Ducey moved too quickly to lift restrictions in May.

It’s not just Humble who is noticing the delays in reporting and how that affects the numbers – and the conclusions that can be drawn. Joe Gerald, an associate professor at the Zuckerman College of Health at the University of Arizona, concluded in a recent report that it can take time to actually record deaths.

And there’s something else.

Gerald said the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 went from a plateau of 1,093 on May 22 – a week after the governor lifted his stay-at-home order – to 4,834.

And Gerald, in his report, said that as of July 10, 3,485 of Arizona’s 7,971 general ward beds were occupied by patients with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 infection, a 16% increase from the week before. So there is a trend – toward increased hospitalizations.

Kirk Finchem concedes there are weaknesses in his report.