Azure SQL provides the replication of the database to other regions to make them highly available. Replication can be done to any region. However, an architect should choose a peer region for replication. These peer regions are a minimum of 300 miles apart and are still connected with high-speed networks. These peer regions are also patched one at a time, and so there is no risk that the patch will happen in parallel to these regions.
The data in the replicated site can be made read-available to the applications.