Surging numbers of COVID-19 cases in Arizona have pushed some hospital intensive-care units to their limits in recent weeks, but health experts around the state said hospitals still have room to adapt – for now.

The Arizona Department of Health Services has recorded 8,360 new cases of the coronavirus so far this month, almost 30% of the total 28,296 cases since the disease was first reported in the state in January.

Those new patients are putting a strain on hospital beds, with 76% of ICU beds occupied as of Monday. Hospital administrators said they are coping, but one nurse said seeing the constant stream of COVID-19 patients is “soul-crushing.”

“I didn’t use to dread going to work but when I know I am going to be in the COVID unit, I dread it. I have the best job in the world but it’s just – soul crushing is just the best way to describe it,” said Austin Kopas, an ICU nurse in Phoenix.

Experts say the pinch is being felt around the state, from hospitals in Phoenix to those in rural areas. At Yuma Regional Medical Center, officials said close to half of the ICU beds in use Tuesday were occupied by COVID-19 patients.

WASHINGTON – Cities were already grappling with the health and economic impact of COVID-19 when protests uncovered what one mayor Thursday called the “second pandemic” – a fractured police relationship with minority communities.

The comments came in a virtual roundtable discussion with mayors from across the country, including Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego, who were asked to talk about “national unrest amid COVID-19 pandemic.”

Gallego was joined by mayors of Atlanta, Stockton, California, and Newark, New Jersey, who split the hour-long conversation evenly between cops and the coronavirus. While the discussion was wide-ranging, the mayors agreed on one thing: It’s a challenging time.

“It has been quite a few two weeks in Phoenix, Arizona,” Gallego said during the event, which was sponsored by the Center for American Progress. “We have been having robust conversations with the police department and our community.”

Cities across the country were rocked in recent weeks by protests over George Floyd’s May 25 killing at the hands of Minneapolis police officers, one of whom knelt one Floyd’s neck for almost 9 minutes despite pleas that he could not breathe.

A number of those protests erupted into clashes with police, with some protesters taking up “defund the police” as a rallying cry.

Employees and members of the public now have to wear masks when inside of Pima County facilities, including common areas, lobbies, elevators, and where physical distancing is not possible or there are no protective barriers.

Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry announced the new health and safety procedures in a June 11 memo.

The county will provide cloth masks for employees, and disposable paper masks for the public and vendors. Masks will not be required in parking garages as long as physical distancing is maintained.

According to Huckelberry’s memo, the changes were put in place “due to an increase in the number of COVID-19 cases, and to prevent the spread of the disease.”

PHOENIX – Gov. Doug Ducey defended his plan to reopen the state Thursday, attributing concerns about the stark increase in the number of positive cases to misinformation and increased testing.

“We put the stay-at-home order in place so that we can prepare for what we’re going through right now,” he told reporters at a news conference.

The rise in Arizona COVID-19 cases has piqued concern from national experts, drawing attention to the growing infection rate and uptick in hospitalizations. The increase in cases comes just a few weeks after Ducey lifted stay-at-home orders on May 15 and Arizonans flocked to Memorial Day events across the state.

“It’s important that people know we are not seeing an increase in patient volume, we are prepared if that increase should come,” Ducey said. “The facts are, we got an increase in testing, an increase in testing and an increase in positive test results. So we’re going to continue to stay laser-focused on COVID-19.”

According to data from the COVID-19 Tracking Project, Arizona and South Carolina are the two states that “appear to have the most dire situations right now.”

According to the Pima County Sheriff’s Department, evacuation and preparation orders throughout the Catalina Foothills remain in place Friday, June 12.

On Thursday, The Pima County Office of Emergency Management and Sheriff’s Department issued an evacuation order for certain Foothills neighborhoods currently threatened by the ongoing Bighorn Fire: Homes between Alvernon Way and 1st Avenue, North of Ina Road are being evacuated.

If you are in this area, EVACUATE NOW. Move south away from the Catalina Mountains. Do not delay leaving the area. The Pima County Sheriff’s Department will be going door to door to make contact with those affected residents who may not have received the message. A cooling shelter is available at CDO High School, 25 W. Calle Concordia, in Oro Valley. Additional messaging will be sent as the situation changes.

Residents of the Catalina Foothills between Alvernon Way and Sabino Canyon Road, north of Skyline Drive, should "be alert" for potential evacuation notices.

PHOENIX – It happened in March, in the middle of the night. Jeff Zhou, a teaching assistant at Arizona State University, was asleep when he heard a kick on his apartment door and then a shouted slur: “Chinese virus!”

The 30-year-old international student from China reported the incident, but it has stuck with him even months later.

“I’m confused why they’d treat me like that,” Zhou said.

The COVID-19 pandemic and its link to Wuhan, the Chinese industrial city where the virus was first detected in December, has prompted harassment and racial violence against Asian Americans and concerns among experts of longer-lasting effects on emotional and mental health.

Cynthia Choi, co-executive director of the San Francisco group Chinese for Affirmative Action, recalls one mother who contacted the group to report her child was being bullied at school and called “coronavirus.”

“She said that she noticed that her child was very depressed and very quiet and said that she did not want to be Asian,” Choi recalled. “So obviously there is a mental health impact.”

After battling the Bighorn Fire on the slopes of the Catalina Mountains, fire crews will experience the highest temperatures yet today, at 107 degrees. This gusty and hot weather is one of the main reasons the Bighorn Fire is so difficult to manage; it has remained at 10 percent contained for multiple days and has grown almost a thousand acres every day since a lightning storm first ignited it on June 5.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Arizona closed in 33,000 as of Friday, June 12, with a jump of 1,654 new cases reported this morning, according to the Arizona Department of Health Services.

Pima County had 3,628 of the state's 32.918 confirmed cases.

A total of 1,144 people have died after contracting the virus, but the number in Pima County couldn't be determined as the Arizona Department of Health Services data dashboard was experiencing technical difficulties this morning and would not load several statistics being followed by the media and public.

In Maricopa County, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases hit 17,010.

Because symptoms can take as long as two weeks to appear after exposure to the virus (while some people can remain entirely asymptomatic), health officials continue to urge the public to avoid unnecessary trips and gatherings of more than 10 people, especially if you have underlying health conditions, and have advised people to cover their faces with masks in public.

Although Gov. Doug Ducey told Arizonans that the state "was clearly on the other side of this pandemic" when he lifted his stay-at-home order on in mid-May, Arizona hospitals continue to see a rise in the number of people hospitalized with COVID symptoms, as well as more people visiting emergency rooms. This morning's Arizona Department of Health Services report shows that as of yesterday, a record 1,336 Arizonans were hospitalized, a jump of 327 from June 1. A record number of 915 people arrived at emergency rooms with COVID-like symptoms on June 10, according to the report. Previous to June, the number of people seeking help in emergency rooms never topped 667, but the daily number hasn't dipped below 800 since June 5. Because of the ADHS website's technical difficulties, the number of people in ICU units today was not available this morning.

Along with growing cases and increasing hospitalizations, Arizona is trending in the wrong direction in one of the CDC gating criteria that Ducey used to justify lifting the stay-at-home order on May 16. Ducey then noted that CDC gating criteria included two weeks of falling cases or two weeks decreasing positive cases as a percentage of total tests. Total cases continue to rise, as does the number of positive cases as a percentage of total tests. On May 17, the percentage of positive tests to total tests was 6 percent; on May 24, it was 9 percent; on May 31, it was 12 percent, according to figure on the ADHS website.

In a contentious press conference yesterday, Ducey acknowledged that trend was moving in the wrong direction and promised the state would continue to monitor that number. But he said the idea of enacting a new stay-at-home order was not under discussion by his administration.

Ducey pushed back at local and national media reports that suggested that the rising cases, increased hospitalization and reversal of CDC gating criteria trends meant that Arizona was moving in the wrong direction. He called reports that the healthcare system was nearing capacity as "misinformation."

He said Arizonans would have to learn to live with the virus.

"This virus is not going away," Ducey said. "There is not a cure for this virus. There is not a vaccine for this virus. So this virus is something we need to learn to live with. And we need to make sure we are protecting the most vulnerable in our society. Those are folks in a certain age bracket with underlying health conditions and at-risk conditions and we're going to continue to do that every single day until there is a vaccine."

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The Best of Tucson 2020® is ready to go and waiting for your nominations! After you're done, you can take a look at the other stories we covered today, just in case you missed them earlier.

• The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Arizona surpassed 31,000 as of Thursday, June 11, with another jump of 1,412 new cases reported this morning, according to the Arizona Department of Health Services.
• The Pima County Sheriff’s Department has announced the ongoing Bighorn Fire poses "significant danger" to the Catalina Foothills area. There have been evacuations in some residential areas.
• Residents evacuating their homes on Tucson’s north side due to the Bighorn Fire can find refuge for their pets at the Pima Animal Care Center, the shelter announced Thursday morning.
• After the Pima County Sheriff's Department ordered several neighborhoods in the Catalina Foothills to evacuate due to the encroaching Bighorn Fire, U-Haul announced they are offering 30 days of free self-storage and container usage to impacted residents.
• There's an important safety tip missing from this safety tip from Gov. Doug Ducey: He's still not encouraging people to wear masks when they're out in public.
• Tucson Weekly asked the candidates running for Board of Supervisors seats this year if they approved of those decisions and if they would have done anything differently.
• As protesters across the world demand justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner and other Black people who were murdered by police, calls for disbanding law enforcement have gained unprecedented support.
• The brother of George Floyd, whose death at the hands of Minneapolis police sparked nationwide protests, told a somber House committee Wednesday that he hopes his testimony can bring changes so that Floyd’s “death will not be in vain.”
• Keep the party rolling at The Gaslight Music Hall, where the show has moved into the parking lot over the last few weeks after founder Tony Terry launched his newest production: The drive-in concert series.