Friday, August 27, 2021
Thursday, August 26, 2021
Pima Animal Care Center is looking to pair furry friends with loving humans during a month of “Clear the Shelters” events.
PACC is offering an adoption promotion every week until Sept. 19 to free space at the shelter.
“We are very excited to have this adoption event happening at PACC!” said Monica Dangler, director of Animal Services. “This event couldn’t come at a better time with the shelter being so full.”
Pima’s shelter is filled to the brim with new dogs because of monsoon weather and specific needs for large dogs. The shelter hopes this month of events will incentivize adopters and fosters to help clear space for animals that can’t be adopted right away.
This week, PACC is offering a $0 adoption fee for all animals in the shelter. Additional promotions throughout the month will be announced via social media every Monday.
The shelter is hosting four events in their multi-purpose room this month:
- Foster Fair on Aug. 29, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
- Long Stay Lounge on Sept. 4 and Sept. 5, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
- Foster Fair Sept. 12, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The main event will be a “Party at PACC” on Sept. 19. Giveaways, prizes, and food trucks are available to attendees.
Take a look at available pets before heading to the shelter at pima.gov/animalcare. You can also find more information about the “Clear the Shelters” event at cleartheshelters.com.
PACC is located at 4000 N. Silverbell Road, open Monday to Friday, noon to 7 p.m., and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.
PHOENIX – The ACC, Big Ten and Pac-12 conferences announced an official alliance Tuesday – a move that could impact the athletic programs at Arizona State and Arizona as well as the PlayStation Fiesta Bowl.
“Despite the shifting landscape, there are some critical constants among many college athletics, and specifically among every one of the 41 institutions in our three conferences,” said new Pac-12 Commissioner George Kliavkoff. “These constants include a resolute commitment to our student-athletes, a commitment to both academic and athletic excellence and a commitment to protecting that which makes college sports so special for our student-athletes, alumni and fans.”
The decision could pave the way for matchups appealing to Pac-12 fans, such as Arizona State-Ohio State or Arizona-Clemson. It also has the potential to give the alliance leverage in determining the structure of a 12-team College Football Playoff format, in how playoff games are divvied up among bowl games like the Fiesta and in television contract negotiations.
There is no signed contract or legal document to bind the alliance, as it operates under a gentlemen’s agreement. However, the conferences will join forces on critical issues in college athletics.
“It’s about trust,” ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said. “It’s about, we’ve looked each other in the eye. We’ve made an agreement. We have great confidence and faith.”
Among the prevalent issues within collegiate athletics, the alliance hopes to address are athlete mental and physical health; strong academic experience and support; diversity; gender equity; future structure of the NCAA; and postseason championships and future formats.
In the wake of plans by Texas and Oklahoma to move from the Big 12 to the SEC by 2025, the new alliance between the three Power Five conferences will add much-needed leverage for the 41 institutions involved.
Monday, August 23, 2021
When Ne’Lexia Galloway started her job as the Black outreach representative for U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego in January 2020, she thought that the Phoenix Democrat would listen to people that look like her. Fifteen months later, she felt used, and quit her job.
Galloway posted on Twitter that she left after concluding that Gallego, who is in his fourth term representing the Arizona congressional district with the largest Black population, had no actual interest in engaging his Black constituents. When mass arrests of protesters and controversial felony and gang-related prosecutions were taking place in Phoenix, the congressman failed to “speak up about the injustices that were occurring in his district to Black and Brown constituents,“ she wrote.
Galloway’s statement brought attention to the growing frustration Black community leaders have expressed about Gallego. Some call him anti-Black. Others said he does nothing for Black people. They wonder, does he do anything to represent them?
For five months beginning in May 2020, thousands took to the streets in Arizona to protest the deaths of Black people at the hands of police: George Floyd in Minnesota, Breonna Taylor in Kentucky, Dion Johnson in Phoenix, and scores of others whose names didn’t make headlines but died after encounters with law enforcement. Phoenix police officers arrested hundreds, sometimes on false felony charges and trumped up gang charges. Activists with local groups like Black Lives Matter Metro Phoenix and Mass Liberation Arizona denounced police for arresting protestors and lying on arrest documents, accusing Maricopa County of prosecuting political opponents.
Those complaints, arrests and prosecutions are the heart of several federal lawsuits and a civil rights investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice into the City of Phoenix and the Phoenix Police Department that was announced this month.
Gallego responded to the DOJ investigation, saying the need to closely examine police policies, behaviors and reforms “has never been more clear.”
Galloway didn’t understand how Gallego now expressed clarity on this issue, when he lacked clarity for months in addressing his constituents’ complaints. She posted on Aug. 7 her experiences calling her former boss’ words “political theatre.”
Congressman Gallego’s office made a statement about @CivilRights investigating the Phoenix Police Department. From my experience I know this to be political theatre. “Accountability MUST be the Rule not the exception”-Congressman Gallego
Full statement:https://t.co/11nDxaMIo7
— NeLexia Galloway (@NelexiaG) August 7, 2021
Galloway is now executive director of the Maricopa County Democratic Party. She emphasized that the experiences she shared on Aug. 7 only represent her perspective, not that of the places she is affiliated with.
Saturday, August 21, 2021
Students in the Marana School District joined a growing number of classrooms across the state in wearing masks when indoors.
The Marana Unified School District governing board voted 3-2 at a special meeting on Friday to require universal use of masks when indoors on school property and district buses.
The mask requirement starts Monday and will continue until Sept. 29, when a new state law banning mask requirements goes into effect. Masks will remain optional outdoors and exemptions will be provided for medical, religious and specific instructional reasons.
The board considered the mask mandate after Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Randall Warner ruled in favor of Phoenix Union High School District, stating the district did not violate state law with its mask mandate, because the law prohibiting schools from mandating masks does not go into effect until Sept 29, 90 days after the legislative session adjourns.
Marana followed the Sunnyside Unified School District, when its board passed the mask requirement on Thursday, and several other districts, including Tucson Unified, Catalina Foothills, Amphitheater and Flowing Wells.
As of Friday, Marana had the second-highest number of cases reported since July 20 with 184, according to data from the Pima County Health Department. The Vail School District, which does not require masks, tops the list with 186 since July 20.
Vail began the school year earlier than other districts. Its governing board voted to make masks optional at their June 8 meeting and has not revisited that decision. The number of COVID-19 cases has dropped from the peak of 69 cases reported as of Aug. 1 to 35 cases reported between Aug. 6 and Aug. 15.
Marana Unified governing board member Tom Carlson, who opposed the motion along with Dan Post, said he was told by Superintendent Dan Streeter that the district may be over-reporting COVID-19 cases by 40%, because they report cases contracted outside of the school environment. He believes this would put them on par with the Amphitheater Unified School District, which had 67 active cases of COVID-19 as of Friday.
Pima County Health Department Director Dr. Theresa Cullen has said some school cases are contracted in the community, not in the classroom. The standing order for the health department published on Aug. 17 requires that schools report all positive cases to the department and the health department does not specify where they were contracted. Marana reported 153 active cases on Friday. They will update the dashboard in about a week, said district spokesperson Alli Benjamin.
The Tucson Unified School District governing board voted to require masks on Aug. 5, before the ruling on mask mandates. The district reported 142 cases since July 20 and, as of Aug 20, had 63 active cases.
Catalina Foothills and Flowing Wells announced they would implement mask requirements this week, but reported fewer cases since July 20, with 11 and 22 cases respectively as of Aug. 20. They are the only two school districts that have required masks despite relatively low numbers.
As of Friday, the Sunnyside and Amphitheater school districts reported 92 and 65 cases since July 20.
Dr. Joe Gerald, an epidemiologist who has tracked COVID’s transmission since it first arrived in March 2020, noted that in the week ending Aug. 15, children accounted for roughly one-fourth of all COVID cases and for the first time, the rates of cases among children aged 5 to 9 and aged 10 to 14 surpassed those of all other age groups. Gerald said he expected more outbreaks in schools, especially those that don't follow strict mitigation protocols.
“Resumption of in-person instruction in the face of high community transmission, low vaccination rates, prohibition of universal masking, lack of surveillance testing, and minimal physical distancing is leading to frequent school-related outbreaks and has the potential to accelerate community transmission,” Gerald wrote in his weekly update on the spread of the virus. “On a positive note, several K-12 and university systems are challenging the governor’s prohibition of mask mandates.”
Friday, August 20, 2021
The convicted child rapist emerged from the tree line without warning, walked quickly past the elders who feared him and entered the Navajo home, where his 15-year-old daughter was feeding her pet rabbits.
A short while later, the 6-foot-3-inch man known for being violent emerged with the girl, promising to return in half an hour. But that was a lie. Ozzy Watchman Sr. was kidnapping his daughter for the second time in six months.
Family members pleaded with tribal authorities to issue an Amber Alert, but it never came. Nearly two weeks passed before Watchman and his daughter were found on June 30 — not by Navajo police or the FBI, which has the investigative lead in such cases, but by a maintenance worker who encountered the two as they scavenged for food.
Child sexual abuse is among the worst scourges on Indigenous communities in North America, yet little hard data exists on the extent of the problem. Some researchers estimate it could be as high as one in every two children.
Dr. Renée Ornelas, a veteran child abuse pediatric specialist working in the Navajo Nation — the largest and most populous tribe in the United States — said practically every family she sees has a history of child sexual abuse.
“They’re just little victims everywhere,” she said.
Thursday, August 19, 2021
As health experts have predicted, COVID-19 is spreading in Pima County schools.
As of Thursday, the Pima County Health Department reported 836 cases in schools since July 20. Staff accounted for a little more than 100 of those cases, while the rest were students. The county has declared 31 outbreaks in schools.
Along with school cases, Arizona and the county have a high level of transmission of 282 and 172 cases per 100,000 individuals, respectively, for the week of Aug 8.
Last school year, the CDC recommended schools should switch to virtual instruction when they are in an area of high transmission, unless they can successfully implement all mitigation strategies and have few cases.
Prior to the start of this school year, the CDC emphasized the importance of in-person learning and made it a priority to safely return to in-person instruction in the fall 2021. Given the rise in cases since June due to the highly contagious Delta variant, the CDC changed the guidance on masking, recommending universal masking when indoors for K-12 schools on Aug. 4. But the CDC has yet to return to guidance provided last year regarding virtual learning.
Pima County Health Department Director Dr. Theresa Cullen said they do not know at what point the health department would recommend a return to hybrid or virtual instruction, but instead are “doing everything they can to keep schools open.”
“We believe students need to be in school,” said Cullen.
Wednesday, August 18, 2021
Banner Health is reporting a troubling increase in hospitalizations of COVID-19, coupled with a higher-than-average number of non-COVID patients.
Last week, the number of ICU patients in Arizona, for both COVID and non-COVID patients, reached the peak numbers of those seen in the summer 2020 surge, said Chief Clinical Officer Dr. Marjorie Bessel at a media conference Wednesday morning.
She reported only 30% of those patients are COVID positive, compared to the last surge when 50 to 60% were COVID positive. Bessel believes the high number of non-COVID patients in the ICU is partly due to patients delaying care in 2020 because of the pandemic and are now seeking care for illnesses and medical issues that have become more severe.
“The high number of non-COVID patients that we were caring for coupled with the week over week increase in COVID hospitalizations is troubling,” said Bessel.
During the past week, she said they continue to see an increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations, ICU admissions, and ventilator usage. Banner has also seen exponential growth in pediatric COVID hospitalizations. In the first two weeks of August, Banner had as many pediatric COVID admissions as they did the entire month of June, according to Bessel. She said they are on track to surpass the number of pediatric COVID patients seen during the winter surge.
Due to the rise in cases and decreased hospital capacity, the Pima County Health Department updated its Public Health Advisory on Tuesday.
Similar to Banner, Pima County hospitals are seeing more people coming to the ER for reasons other than COVID-19, such as heart attacks, RSV and sepsis, who require hospital admission. According to the Public Health Advisory, local hospitals are also experiencing abnormally long wait times for EMS to be able to transfer care of their patient to the hospital staff, becoming unable to respond to other emergencies.
The Pima County Health Department said “It is NOT the norm for area hospitals to be experiencing such high hospital admission rates, reduced hospital surge capacity and long EMS offload times at this time of year.”
Alongside decreased hospital capacity, area hospitals face severe nursing workforce shortages due to high rates of turnover and burnout from the pandemic.
Banner Health has several core positions available and is securing external contracted labor for both nurses and therapists. Bessel said they have individuals who are starting each week and expect that to continue throughout the winter. Banner is requiring all employees to receive the COVID-19 vaccine by Nov. 1 and would include vaccination in the onboarding process for new employees. Bessel does not believe this requirement will have a large impact as many other health care systems in the communities they operate have a similar process.
“We do expect that staffing will continue to be our greatest challenge as we continue to face this surge,” said Bessel.
