The University of Arizona is encouraging students to get vaccinated before they travel outside of Pima County and, ideally, students should receive their first dose by Friday to be fully vaccinated come summer vacation, UA President Robert C. Robbins said on Monday morning.

“We want to vaccinate as many of our students as we can, prior to the end of the semester, with many students traveling out of state to return home for the summer, or to do programs outside of Pima County,” said Robbins. “We have a very limited window to administer the first dose for them to reach full vaccination before traveling, due to the wait time between doses.”

Last week, the university announced students could register for same-day vaccination appointments at either the student registration tent at the UA POD on Cherry Avenue open from 10 a.m to 8 p.m., or the CAT Ambassador Team Tent on the Mall in front of the Student Union.

Robbins said when speaking to students on campus, they found many are hesitant to receive the vaccine or want to talk to their family or friends before making an appointment.

Faced with hundreds of unfilled appointments daily, the UA POD is looking to tackle the barriers faced due to vaccination hesitancy.

The Arizona International Film Festival returns this week with 12 days of online and outdoor film screenings from comedy to drama to documentary. The 29th festival kicks off opening night at the MSA Annex on Wednesday, April 14, with an outdoor screening of Dustwun, a drama about a friendship between an undocumented migrant lost from her group traveling toward the United States and a troubled American veteran building his own "wall" out of trash in the desert. Filmmaker Genevieve Anderson will be present at the screening.

The 2021 AIFF includes 24 feature films and 75 shorts. This year’s films range from a bipolar love story to a hike across Utah to an experimental “film poem” about democracy. In addition to feature length films, there are also blocks of short films and panels where film professionals discuss cinematography, international film, independent films, and their own work.

While multiple festival films were shot here in Arizona, other entries range from Italy to Turkey to Sudan.

The 2021 Arizona International Film Festival runs from Wednesday, April 14, to Sunday, April 25. To view the full schedule and to buy tickets, visit filmfestivalarizona.com.

With 675 new cases reported today, the total number of Arizona’s confirmed novel coronavirus cases topped 850,000 as of Monday, April 12, according to the Arizona Department of Health Services.

Pima County, which reported 105 new cases today, has seen 113,764 of the state’s 850,236 confirmed cases.

With no new deaths reported this morning, a total of 17,086 Arizonans have died after contracting COVID-19, including 2,369 deaths in Pima County, according to the April 12 report.

A total of 552 coronavirus patients were in the hospital as of April 11. That’s roughly 11% of the number hospitalized at the peak of the winter surge, which reached 5,082 on Jan. 11. The summer peak was 3,517, which was set on July 13, 2020. The subsequent lowest number of hospitalized COVID patients was 468, set on Sept. 27, 2020.

A total of 911 people visited emergency rooms with COVID-like symptoms on April 11. That number represents 39% of the record high of 2,341 set on Tuesday, Dec. 29, 2020. That number had peaked during the summer wave at 2,008 on July 7, 2020; it hit a subsequent low of 653 on Sept. 28, 2020.

A total of 148 COVID-19 patients were in intensive care unit beds on April 11, which roughly 12.5% of the record 1,183 ICU patients set on Jan. 11. The summer’s record number of patients in ICU beds was 970, set on July 13, 2020. The subsequent low was 114 on Sept. 22, 2020.

Decline in COVID cases stalls

A decline in cases of COVID-19 in Arizona has stalled in the wake of Gov. Doug Ducey’s lifting of restrictions designed to slow the spread of the killer virus.

While numbers are still far lower than at the January peak in cases, the state has now seen two weeks of minor increases in cases following 10 weeks of decline, while hospital occupancy has been on a slight upswing, according to Dr. Joe Gerald, an epidemiologist and professor in the UA School of Public Health who has been tracking the novel coronavirus for more than a year.

“[O]ur three-month streak of sustained improvements has stalled owing to more transmissible variants and/or normalization of business and social activities,” Gerald wrote in his tracking report. “Nonetheless, hospital capacity remains adequate to meet Arizona’s needs even though the backlog of non-COVID care has yet to be fully addressed.”

In the week ending April 4, a total of 4,281 Arizonans tested positive for COVID, a 2 percent jump from the previous week.

Gerald noted that for the first time, the rate of cases among people older than 65 had fallen below that of children, with 28 cases per 100,000 for seniors vs. 37 cases per 100,000 among kids younger than 15.

Overall, Arizonans were testing positive at a rate of 59 cases per 100,000, which kept the state just above the threshold of “substantial” spread of the virus. People between the ages of 15 and 24 were testing positive at a rate of 95 cases per 100,000. People between the ages of 16 and 64 were testing positive at a rate of 70 cases per 100,000.

Gerald advised that people and businesses should continue to follow the advice of public health experts regarding wearing masks and other precautions, but that “normalization of low-risk activities remains reasonable.” But he said medically vulnerable people who had not yet been vaccinated should continue to avoid going out in public.

Mask mandate still on in Pima County

Arizona Health Director Cara Christ said last week that she would not move to overrule Pima County's mask mandate, which requires anyone over the age of 5 to wear a mask in public places where physical distancing is not possible unless they are exempted by a qualifying health condition.

At an April 9 press briefing, Christ said while she has the authority as the head of Arizona Department of Health, she is focusing on the vaccination efforts and didn’t think she’d use the power “at this point in the pandemic.”

After Pima County said it would keep its mask requirement in place despite Gov. Doug Ducey announcement that he was lifting other COVID restrictions and local governments could no longer enforce mask mandates.

In a March 26 letter, the Pima County Attorney’s Office advised County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry that Gov. Doug Ducey does not have the legal authority to prevent the County Health Department from enacting reasonable public health measures.

“It is up to the Legislature, not the Governor, to decide what authority it wants to delegate to counties. It has delegated counties broad public health authority, as well as authority over their own property,” wrote Deputy County Attorney Jonathan Pinkney in a legal opinion released by the Board of Supervisors on April 6. “The Governor cannot, through the exercise of his executive authority, take that away.”

After state Sens. Vince Leach (R-SaddeBrooke) and Michelle Urgenti-Rita (R-HOMETOWN) and state Rep. Bret Roberts (R-Maricopa) asked Attorney General Mark Brnovich about Pima County’s authority in the matter, Brnovich provided an informal opinion that backed Pinkey’s position, but also suggested: “the Governor likely has the authority to preempt the county resolution through ADHS rules and regulations promulgated and enforced by ADHS.”

While Ducey has not ordered Christ to overturn local mask mandates, he did sign House Bill 2270 last week, which allows businesses to ignore future mask mandates once it takes effect later this year.

Will Humble, the former director of health in the Brewer administration and the head of the Arizona Public Health Association, wrote on his blog that it was “astonishingly irresponsible to sign a bill that completely gets rid of this non-pharmaceutical intervention during an emergency and also stripping all regulations from the Administrative Code that require infection control or environmental exposure masks.”

“Of course, the ADHS under the leadership of Director Christ offered no statement or testimony in committee expressing any concern whatsoever about the bill,” Humble added. “Such is the state of the public health leadership in this state.”

Pima County transitioning to indoor vaccination sites

As temperatures rise, Pima County officials are shifting to indoor vaccination sites to avoid making staff and volunteers endure long days in triple-degree temperatures.

Pima County opens a new indoor vaccine site today at the Kino Event Center, where the county had earlier been doing COVID testing. That site is open 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., Monday through Saturday. Register at azdhs.gov.

The county has also opened an indoor vaccination POD at El Pueblo Center, 101 W. Irvington Road, which is open Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. No appointment is necessary.

The county is working with TMC to move their drive-thru POD to a walk-through site at the Udall Center at Udall Park, 7200 E. Tanque Verde Road, beginning April 19. Appointments can be made through register.vaccine.pima.gov.

The drive-through POD at Banner-South Kino Stadium, 2500 E. Ajo Way, will offer appointments between 7:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. beginning April 17.

As of Monday, April 12, XXX people in Pima County had received at least one shot of the virus, accounting for X% of the population. A total of X people were fully vaccinated.

Anyone 16 and older is now eligible for vaccination at Pima County or state PODs.

You can register for your vaccine appointments at a state POD by visiting pod vaccine.azdhs.gov, and those who need assistance can call 1-844-542-8201.

Register for an appointment at a Pima County POD at pima.gov/covid19vaccineregistration or by calling 520-222-0119.

Many local pharmacies are now receiving vaccine doses. To find one near you, visit the ADHS website.

Get tested: Pima County has free COVID testing

Pima County is continuing to offer a number of testing centers and pop-up testing sites around town, including the northside Ellie Towne Flowing Wells Community Center, 1660 W. Ruthrauff Road. Schedule an appointment at pima.gov/covid19testing.

The University of Arizona’s antibody testing can determine if you have had COVID and now have antibodies. To sign up for testing, visit https://covid19antibodytesting.arizona.edu/home.

—with additional reporting from Austin Counts, Christina Duran, Jeff Gardner and Mike Truelsen

President Biden will nominate Tucson Police Chief Chris Magnus, a longtime critic of Trump-era immigration policies, to oversee Customs and Border Protection, according to a report in the New York Times.

Magnus was chosen because of his progressive efforts to promote community policing, according to the Times.

Magnus would report to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to lead border security and immigration policies as well as coordinated defense.

Magnus criticized President Trump's immigration policies in a 2017 op-ed piece in the Times.

“The harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric and Mr. Sessions’s reckless policies ignore a basic reality known by most good cops and prosecutors,” he wrote. “If people are afraid of the police, if they fear they may become separated from their families or harshly interrogated based on their immigration status, they won’t report crimes or come forward as witnesses.”

PHOENIX – Nationwide lockdowns in the past year have driven demand for companionship from man’s best friend during the pandemic, and shelters across the country have seen spikes in dog adoptions and fosters. But some pricey and popular canines are being ripped away from their intended forever homes and sold to unsuspecting buyers.

It’s known as dog-flipping, a phenomenon that drew widespread attention after pop star Lady Gaga’s dog walker was shot and wounded and her two French bulldogs were stolen in February, according to the Los Angeles Police Department. The dogs were returned after the performer offered $500,000 as a reward, and the investigation continues into whether thieves targeted Gaga or just her valuable Frenchies.

Because pets are legally viewed nationwide as personal property, dog thieves generally have little to lose.

In Phoenix, dog theft reports are on the rise. In 2019, 137 pets were reported stolen, Sgt. Andy Williams told Cronkite News. In 2020, that number jumped to 155.

“Animals and pets are considered property, so with regards to theft there are no unique laws” for pet abductions, he said.

According to pet detective Karin TarQwyn, French bulldogs and other small breeds have become desirable over the past two to three years. A quick search on Craigslist shows asking prices for a Frenchie range from $4,000 to $10,000.

“The least amount of money that we’ve been able to use to get a French bulldog back (to its rightful owner) is $3,500,” said TarQwyn, who has worked full time to assist in locating and recovering missing pets since 2005. “And people are willing to pay the price because they are desperate.”