At the end of March, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey delivered an executive order that temporarily stopped residential evictions under specific circumstances related to the COVID-19 outbreak.

After hearing news of this executive order, the Pima County Consolidated Justice Court postponed all their eviction hearings. According to a news release, they've been instructed not to do mass postponements, but rather evaluate each case individually.

This has resulted in a resuming of evictions during the COVID-19 emergency. More than 373 evictions have been scheduled to take place this week, according to the release.

Gov. Ducey's order delivered on March 24 specifies that a tenant should not be evicted if:

• They are required to self-quarantine based on a COVID-19 diagnosis;
• They are ordered by a medical professional to self-quarantine based on identified symptoms;
• They live with someone who is diagnosed with COVID-19;
• They have a health condition that makes them more at-risk for COVID-19 than the average person, as defined by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention;
• They suffered a substantial loss of income due to COVID-19 including job loss, reduction in pay, closure of their place of employment, they had to stay home with their child or other "pertinent circumstances"

The order still allows for an eviction to be carried out if a court determines that "enforcement is necessary in the interest of justice."

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Arizona had reached 3,806 as of Tuesday, April 14, according to the morning report from the Arizona Department of Health Services.

Pima County had seen 685 of the state’s confirmed cases.

The coronavirus had killed 131 people statewide, including 32 in Pima County, according to the state health department.

In Maricopa County, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases had risen to 2,056.

State officials are not yet releasing information about how many people have recovered from the virus.

The state remains under Gov. Doug Ducey’s stay-at-home order that has closed a wide number of “non-essential” businesses, including many retail stores, barbershops, salons, and swap meets. Public parks remain open but amenities such as playgrounds and restrooms are closed.

Under the stay-at-home order, Arizonans are still able to shop for groceries, medical and household needs, and pet supplies. They can also go work, pick up a take-out meal from a restaurant, travel to take care of a family member, friend or pet, and can still go walking, hiking, biking and golfing, provided that they adhere to social distancing guidelines.

Because COVID-19 symptoms can take as long as two weeks to appear after exposure to the virus (and some people can remain entirely asymptomatic), health officials say community spread of the disease is far worse than the official numbers suggest. They have urged the public to avoid unnecessary trips and gatherings of more than 10 people. The CDC has now advised people to cover their faces in masks in public.

President Donald Trump has said that he was considering May 1 as the date for “reopening the country” and lifting stay-at-home orders. Asked by a reporter yesterday what authority he had to lift stay-at-home orders issued by governors, Trump replied: “When somebody’s the President of the United States, the authority is total. And that’s the way it’s gotta be. It’s total. And the governors know that.”

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Click here to read their biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

Kendra Boroff believes she contracted the coronavirus on her 71st birthday, Feb. 20, when her family went out for a celebratory dinner, perhaps from their waiter, who was coughing into his elbow. Four days later, she developed a fever and a raging sore throat.

“You feel like you’re suffocating,” recalled Boroff, a real estate agent in Maineville, Ohio. “You cough and breathe with the top fourth or maybe less of your chest, because everything else is in a vise.”

Over the course of the next three weeks, as Boroff started getting chills and nausea, a series of doctors would suggest that it could be the common cold, bronchitis or pneumonia. She tested negative for the flu, and her chest X-rays showed signs of lung damage, including white patches called “ground-glass opacities” that are common in COVID-19 cases. By March 7, she was pretty sure it was COVID-19, but she couldn’t get a test until she arrived at the emergency room at the University of Cincinnati Health Center on March 19. She had a 103 degree fever and her oxygen levels were plummeting, so the doctors admitted her immediately.

Nearly a week later, as Boroff’s condition was stabilizing, the test results came back: negative.

Boroff was flummoxed, but her physician was clear that she had the virus, no matter what her test said.

“‘This is my diagnosis,’” she recalled him saying. “‘There is no other explanation.’”

WASHINGTON – While Congress and the White House are promising to add billions to the Paycheck Protection Program, some small businesses say they are just trying to hang on long enough to get the money there now.

Advocates say overwhelming demand and confusion have delayed disbursement of the $349 billion in loans made available last Friday under the program aimed to help businesses suffering as a result of coronavirus lockdowns.

Small Business Administration officials have acknowledged that complicated policies, a surge of applications and the “newness” of the program made for a bumpy roll out. One SBA official In Arizona said while she doesn’t “have a crystal ball,” she expects the system to stabilize in the coming days.

But business owners say they are running out of time.

“I’ve talked to restaurant owners that really can't continue to pay employees for no more than two weeks,” said Chad Heinrich, the Arizona state director of the National Federation of Independent Business.

The MVD is finally moving into the 21st century and updating its obsolete computer system. All offices, third party services, and ServiceArizona.com will be affected by this change, and though it's a welcome one, it doesn't come without drawbacks.

Everything related to MVD will be non-operational for about four days while the update takes place, and until it's completed, no MVD services can be used.

The situation with COVID-19 has already resulted in a delay of the REAL ID deadline by a full year, and people whose licenses would have expired between March 1 and Sept. 1 have already had their expiration dates extended by six months, so that should help alleviate some issues.

MVD will shut down between 5 p.m. Friday, April 17, through Tuesday, April 21.

ADOT promises it's a major update: "The introduction of this state-of-the-art computer system has been planned for nearly five years and is required because the current platform used by MVD has elements that are more than 35 years old and are no longer sustainable."

After the updates have completed, Arizonans will have more options available to them online through the AZ MVD Now application. Every current Arizona MVD customer already has an AZ MVD Now login that just needs activation. Additionally, many services can also be fulfilled by mail instead of having to go into a physical office.

ServiceArizona.com will continue to operate for basic transactions, but customers are encouraged to activate their personal AZ MVD Now account at azmvdnow.gov for most MVD services.

For more information, click here.

The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Arizona had reached 3,702 as of Monday, April 13, according to the morning report from the Arizona Department of Health Services.

Pima County had seen 668 of the state’s confirmed cases.

The coronavirus had killed 122 people statewide, including 29 in Pima County, according to the state and county health department.

In Maricopa County, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases had risen to 2,020.

The state remains under Gov. Doug Ducey’s stay-at-home order that has closed a wide number of “non-essential” businesses, including many retail stores, barbershops, salons, and swap meets. Public parks remain open but amenities such as playgrounds and restrooms are closed.

Under the stay-at-home order, Arizonans are still able to shop for groceries, medical and household needs, and pet supplies. They can also go work, pick up a take-out meal from a restaurant, travel to take care of a family member, friend or pet, and can still go walking, hiking, biking and golfing, provided that they adhere to social distancing guidelines.

Newly minted Pima County Supervisor Betty Villegas describes her first day on the job as bittersweet as she enters the office of her former colleague and friend, Democrat Richard Elias, who died of a heart attack in late March after nearly two decades representing District 5.

The Pima County Board of Supervisors appointed Villegas to the position in a 3-1 vote earlier this week.

“This experience is bittersweet. I never really imagined I would find myself in this position,” Villegas said. “It feels almost surreal to be in his office where I visited many times. I told Mr. Huckleberry I want to leave everything as-is.”

Villegas said she was surprised to see a gift she had given Elias when he first appointed District 5 supervisor was still in his office. Elias took over for then-Supervisor Raul Grijalva, who left the office in 2002  to run for the congressional seat he still holds today.

“I remember when he was first appointed going in (Elias’ office) and it was pretty empty at the time,” Villegas said “I gave him a zen rock garden, you know, with the sand and little rake. He still has it there."

The incoming supervisor said everything in Elias’ office—gifts, awards, things he collected—is a reflection of who he was as a person and what the community thought of him. She hopes to continue Elias’ legacy of being dedicated to the community he loved.

“It’s very inspiring to do (Elias’) work and do it right. So that’s what I’m going to concentrate on,” Villegas said. “You can’t fill his shoes. He was a huge personality who cared for his community. I’ll do the best that I can.”

This isn’t the first time Villegas has taken over a position held by Elias. She took over as program manager for Pima County Affordable Housing Department after Elias was appointed to Grijalva’s District 5 seat.

“The ironic thing is that I moved into (Elias’) spot when he moved to county supervisor and now I’m taking his spot again,” Villegas said.

While in office, Villegas said her focus is going to be on helping Pima County constituents during the COVID-19 outbreak by making sure state and federal funding is going where it needs to go in a quick and uncomplicated manner.

“Going into this position when nothing is normal you have to think, “What can I do with my experience and skills, and what would Richard do?” Villegas said. “Even though the funding has been allocated, the process of how to get it out to the masses is still not really clear. But we need to make it as uncomplicated as possible.”

UA President Robert Robbins warned this week that a return to normal life could be months away—or longer.

“The facts are that until there's a vaccine, we’re never going to be completely risk free,” Robbins said in a teleconference on Wednesday evening. “That’s probably a year at least before we would have a vaccine. We’ve been working for 30 years on an HIV vaccine and still don’t have one because that virus mutates frequently. But this is a coronavirus, there have been lots of studies done on coronavirus. I know that several of our top basic scientists have been working on coronavirus here at the U of A for more than two decades. So we know a lot about coronavirus, but this is a novel virus, so we've got to hope it follows the biology of other viruses.”

If the community spread of COVID-19 is still significant in the fall, international and out-of-state students likely will not return to campus, which could have a significant impact on the university’s tuition revenue.

Robbins said 40 percent of all students are from outside Arizona, and about 15 percent are international students. He said they’re currently modeling what that hit in revenue could look like.

“We just don't know by the fall where people's minds are going to be about coming back to campus or not,” Robbins said. “The financial impact, we’re modeling it, but as you could imagine our net tuition revenue is derived greatly from out-of-state and international students. So we’re going to have significant shortfalls in the projections of what we’re going to have in tuition revenue.”