State health department tells university COVID-19 modeling team to stop work, limits data access

The Arizona Department of Health Services told a team of university experts working on COVID-19 modeling to "pause" its work, an email from a department leader shows.

The modeling team of about two dozen professors at Arizona State University and the University of Arizona was compiling the most robust public model in Arizona of COVID-19. 

The email, from DHS bureau chief of public health statistics S. Robert Bailey, came on Monday evening, after Gov. Doug Ducey announced plans to begin easing social distancing in the coming days. 

ABC15 first reported on the email stopping the modelers' work. 

The state is instead relying on a model from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. This model has not been released to the public. 

The universities' model had shown that reopening at the end of May was the only scenario that didn't dramatically increase cases. 

In late April, Tim Lant, a mathematical epidemiologist at ASU, said the model showed five different scenarios for how the disease could progress in Arizona, depending on how social distancing efforts were relaxed.

The slowest curve, based on if the state reopens at the end of May, is “the only one that doesn't put me immediately back on an exponential growth curve,” Lant said in April. That’s because transmission rates would be lowest at that time, he said.

“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.

Bailey wrote that health department leadership asked the team to "pause" all work on projections and modeling. The department would also be ending access to special data sets the modeling team had been using for their efforts, Bailey said. 

"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 team could be needed again in the late summer or early fall as the influenza season returns, he noted. 

Bailey thanked the modeling team and said it "has produced very high-quality results, and these have been very helpful in guiding and informing the decision-making process."

Ducey spokesman Patrick Ptak said Wednesday the state was using multiple models earlier on, which often had “widely divergent” projections and changed constantly.

“We now have two months of on-the-ground data,” Ptak said. “We’ve been able to see which models are accurate—which match the actual facts and are most useful—and which are not.”

Ptak noted that Christ, who is an infectious disease epidemiologist and public health expert, made the decision to pause the university modeling group “after reviewing all the data.”

“The modeling we are utilizing going forward is developed by FEMA and CDC and ensures our hospitals have capacity for any situation,” he said. “That is the case currently, but we aren’t taking any chances. All our decisions are guided by data as well as the recommendations of the CDC and public health officials. This will continue to be the case.” 

ASU referred media inquiries on the issue to the state health department. UA did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

In an interview on Tuesday, state health director Cara Christ said the modeling team wasn't disbanded. 

"We just asked them to take a pause for a little bit," Christ said. "We are continuing to get updated FEMA models and we think that that is really representative of where we are. But we did tell them to please stay engaged, because we may need to bring them back in the fall to look at modeling during flu season."

Christ said it should be "pretty easy to just pick up the phone and ask them to come back and help us out" later in the year if needed. 

Christ said the department again asked FEMA Tuesday if its model could be released publicly, but the department hasn't received a response yet.

Democratic State Rep. Kelli Butler of Phoenix said on Twitter that the move was "incredibly troubling." 

"So, fewer experts and even less transparency as GovDucey reopens #AZ," Butler wrote. 

In a blog post on the Arizona Public Health Association's website, the organization's director, Will Humble, wrote that the move was astonishing. He said the model was "very solid work being done by top talent in the field that is very useful for decision-making purposes."

He noted that the email from Bailey didn't cite any specific reason for the work to stop, aside from that it was at the request of the department's leadership. 

"Last night’s action to disband the Arizona COVID-19 Modeling Working Group begs the question whether the Modeling Working Group was producing results that were inconsistent with other messaging and decisions being made by the executive branch?" Humble wrote.

Arizona Republic reporter Maria Polletta contributed to this report.

Reach reporter Rachel Leingang by email at rachel.leingang@gannett.com or by phone at 602-444-8157, or find her on Twitter and Facebook.

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