The state reports fewer than 600 new cases and one more death.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Nurses test for COVID-19 at the Test Utah site in Herriman, on Friday, February 5, 2021.
Utah is starting ‘little by little’ to get population immunity, also known as herd immunity, a doctor on Infm diseases said on Tuesday at Intermountain Healthcare.
Brandon Webb pointed to the seven-day moving average of about 1,000 new cases a day, about where the state was in October.
“A thousand a day is still too high,” Webb said. ‘But we’m very happy to see it coming down’ because of people taking social distances, wearing masks, getting vaccinated – and because about 180,000 Utahns have recovered from COVID-19 in the last three months.
‘We’re probably just under 20% [immunity] at this point. “It’s not enough, but it helps,” Webb said. ‘And it’s a very important thing to see more and more of the population immune, because it’s linked to social distance [and] masking, it makes our case count. ”
For the second consecutive day, the number of new cases of COVID-19 reported in Utah is well under 1,000. After the Department of Health reported 462 cases on Monday, the Department of Health reported 591 positive tests on Tuesday.
Webb said the state is in a ‘race between vaccines and variants’, adding:’ We can not go fast enough. That’s the point here. ”
He said it was “difficult to know” whether Utah was affected by coronavirus variants because so few tests were done for them. Health experts monitor re-infection rates and vaccine failures, which provide indirect evidence of variants, and ‘at least at this stage we do not see strong signs that we have a predominant tension here in the state. But we continue to look really nice. ”
Webb also warned that people who received their first dose of coronavirus vaccine should continue to take precautions – to social distance and wearing masks.
‘We see too many cases of acute COVID in people who have received their first dose. “You have very little immunity for the first two weeks after receiving the first dose,” he said. The data, he added, show that ‘you are completely immune before you have had the complete two-dose range for the MRNA vaccines. … With the availability of these vaccines, we still need people to be vigilant even after the first dose and through the second dose range. “
Vaccinations reported in the past day / total vaccinations • 7,952 / 532,985.
Number of Utahns receiving two doses • 164,775.
Cases reported in the past day • 591.
Deaths reported in the past day • One – a man 85 years or older in Salt Lake County.
Hospitalizations reported in the past day • 272. It’s two from Monday. Of those currently admitted to the hospital, 106 are in intensive care units – two more than on Monday.
Tests reported in the past day • 4,015 people were tested for the first time. A total of 9,985 people were tested.
Percentage of positive tests • According to the state’s original method, the rate is 14.7%. This is higher than the seven-day average of 13.7%.
The new method counts all test results, including repeated tests of the same individual. Today’s rate is now at 5.9%, slightly lower than the seven day average of 6.4%.
Total to date • 362 347 sake; 1,797 deaths; 14,239 hospitalizations; 2,129,525 people were tested.