SALT LAKE CITY – According to the Utah Department of Health, Utah’s COVID-19 cases increased by 591 on Tuesday, with another death.
There are now an estimated 24,911 active COVID-19 cases in Utah.
The moving average seven-day positive cases per day is now at 950 – according to the health department, the number rose below 1,000 on the second day in a row. The positive test rate per day for the period calculated using the “people on people” method is now 13.7%. The average positive test rate of seven days calculated using the ‘test over test’ method is 6.42%.
There are 272 COVID-19 patients currently hospitalized in Utah, including 104 in intensive care. About 75% of all Utah intensive care beds are full by Tuesday, including about 79% of ICU beds in the state’s 16 referral hospitals. About 51% of the non-ICU hospital beds are also filled according to state data.
A total of 532,985 vaccines were administered in the state, compared to 525,033 on Sunday. Of these, 160,809 are second doses of the vaccine.
The new numbers point to a 0.2% increase in positive cases since Sunday. Of the 2129,525 people tested for COVID-19 in Utah so far, 17% tested positive for the disease. The total number of tests done since the start of the pandemic is now 3,611,107, up 9,985 since Sunday. Of these, 4,015 were tests of humans not previously tested for COVID-19.
The death reported Tuesday was a Salt Lake County man who was over 85 and was hospitalized when he died.
The total number Tuesday in Utah confirmed 362,347 cases, with 14,239 hospitalizations and 1,797 total deaths due to the disease. A total of 335,049 cases in Utah COVID-19 are estimated to be recovered, state data shows.
At a news conference Tuesday morning, Dr. Brandm Webb, Intermountain Healthcare, said infectious diseases that just under 20% of the adult population in Utah are now vaccinated against COVID-19. This led to some initial signs of population immunity to the disease, he said.
“It helps,” Webb said. “It’s a very important thing to see more of the population immune.”
The mRNA vaccines now available have been shown to be effective in conferring immunity to COVID-19, also for the British variant, Webb said. The mRNA vaccines are less effective against the South African and Brazilian variants of COVID-19, so it is important to vaccinate as many people as possible now, so that the variants do not have the opportunity to spread widely and become more dominant. not. , Webb said.
Ensuring that you still wear masks and take social distance is still just as important as ever, because it hinders the spread and spread of communities within communities, he added.
“We want to win the race, and we want to limit the number of broadcasts in our community,” Webb said.
Webb pointed out that the current COVID-19 numbers in Utah are similar to what Utah experienced in October, before a winter surge led to the celestial spread of the disease. Although an average of seven days nearly 1,000 cases a day are still too high, Webb said he expects numbers in Utah to decline, especially as people continue to take precautions as they have done since the beginning of the pandemic. has.
“We are very pleased to see that these (numbers) are declining,” he said.
There is no COVID-19 news conference scheduled for Tuesday. The Utah government, Spencer Cox, is expected to deliver an update to COVID-19 at 10:00 a.m. Thursday during its monthly news conference with PBS Utah.
Methods:
Test results now contain data from PCR tests and antigen tests. Positive COVID-19 test results are reported to the health department immediately after confirmation, but negative test results may not be reported 24 to 72 hours.
The total number of cases reported each day by the Utah Department of Health includes all cases of COVID-19 since the outbreak of Utah, including those currently infected, those recovering from the disease, and those who have died.
Recovered cases are defined as anyone who was diagnosed with COVID-19 three or more weeks ago and did not die.
Reference hospitals are the 16 Utah hospitals that can provide the best COVID-19 health care.
According to the Department of Health, deaths usually occurred two to seven days before they were reported. Some deaths can come back even further, especially if the person is from Utah but died in another state.
According to the Department of Health, as well as likely COVID-19 deaths are confirmed as defined by the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists. The death rates could change as case investigations are completed.
For deaths reported as COVID-19 deaths, the person would not have died if they had not had COVID-19, according to the Department of Health.
The “people over people” method for the average positive test score of seven days is calculated by dividing the number of people who tested positive for COVID-19 by the total number of people tested. The “test over test” method is calculated by dividing the total number of positive tests by the total number of tests administered.
Data included in this story primarily reflects the state of Utah as a whole. Visit the website of your local health district for more localized data.
More information on Utah’s health education levels is available at coronavirus.utah.gov/utah-health-guidance-levels.
Information comes from the Utah Department of Health and coronavirus.utah.gov/case-counts. For more information on how the Utah Department of Health compiles and reports COVID-19 data, visit coronavirus.utah.gov/case-counts and browse to the “Data Notes” section at the bottom of the page.