A team of university experts working on coronavirus projection modeling were told Tuesday by the Arizona Department of Health to pause all current work, a directive that came hours after Gov. Doug Ducey announced plans to begin easing social distancing and reopen certain businesses, reports ABC15.
"The reason that ADHS is pausing the internal modeling is, as we have said before, we are looking at several national models and have determined that FEMA is the most accurate to help us develop and implement public health interventions to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak," ADHS bureau chief Steven Bailey wrote in an email to the group.
"We realize that you have been, and continue to be working very hard on this effort, so we wanted to let you know as soon as possible so that you won't expend further time and effort needlessly," Bailey wrote.
The modeling team consists of about two dozen professors at Arizona State University and the University of Arizona.
Their projections had shown reopening at the end of May was the only scenario that did not dramatically increase cases.
The slowest curve is "the only one that doesn't put me immediately back on an exponential growth curve," Tim Lant, a mathematical epidemiologist at ASU, said in April.
"I can say, scientifically, no, it's not safe to reopen unless you're planning on, you know, shutting down again after a couple of weeks, and we can help figure out what the appropriate amount of time is to stay open before we shut down," he said.
Arizona currently has at least 9,305 confirmed cases of coronavirus, including 395 deaths.
Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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