591 more COVID-19 cases, 1 death reported Tuesday in Utah

SALT LAKE CITY – The number of COVID-19 cases in Utah increased by 591 on Tuesday, with one additional death reported, according to the Utah Department of Health.

There are now approximately 24,911 active COVID-19 cases in Utah.

The seven-day rolling average number of positive cases per day is now 950 – on the second day in a row, that number fell below 1,000, according to the health department. The positive test rate per day for this period calculated with the “people over people” method is now 13.7%. The seven-day average positive test rate calculated using the “test-to-test” method is 6.42%.

There are 272 COVID-19 patients currently hospitalized in Utah, including 104 in intensive care, state data shows. About 75% of all intensive care unit beds in Utah are occupied Tuesday, including about 79% of intensive care beds in the state’s 16 referral hospitals. About 51% of non-ICU hospital beds are also filled, according to state data.

A total of 532,985 vaccines have been administered in the state, up from 525,033 on Sunday. Of these, 160,809 are second doses of the vaccine.

The new figures indicate a 0.2% increase in positive cases since Sunday. Of the 2,129,525 people tested for COVID-19 in Utah so far, 17% have tested positive for the disease. The total number of tests carried out since the start of the pandemic is now 3,611,107, up from 9,985 since Sunday. Of those, 4,015 were tests of people who had not previously been tested for COVID-19.

The death reported Tuesday was a Salt Lake County man who was over 85 and was hospitalized when he died.

Tuesday’s totals give Utah 362,347 total confirmed cases, with 14,239 total hospitalizations and 1,797 total deaths from the disease. A total of 335,049 cases of COVID-19 in Utah are now expected to be recovered, according to state data.

In a Tuesday morning press conference, Intermountain Healthcare infectious disease physician Dr Brandon Webb said just under 20% of Utah’s adult population had now been vaccinated against COVID -19. This has led to some early signs of people’s immunity to the disease, he said.

“It helps,” Webb said. “It’s a very important thing to see more of the immune population.”

The mRNA vaccines that are now available have been shown to be effective in generating immunity against COVID-19, including for the UK variant, Webb said. MRNA vaccines are less effective against the South African and Brazilian variants of COVID-19, which is why it is important to vaccinate as many people as possible now, so that these variants do not have the opportunity to spread widely and become more dominant. , Webb said.

Making sure you continue to wear masks and move away socially is also still as important as ever, as it prevents the variants from spreading and becoming more prevalent in communities, he added.

“We want to win this race, we want to limit the number of transmissions in our community,” said Webb.

Webb pointed out that Utah’s current COVID-19 numbers are similar to what Utah experienced in October, before a winter wave led to a skyrocketing spread of the disease. While a seven-day average of nearly 1,000 cases per day is still too high, Webb said he expects the numbers to continue to drop in Utah, especially if people continue to take precautions as they have been doing since the start of the pandemic.

“We are very happy to see that these (numbers) are going down,” he said.

There is no COVID-19 press conference scheduled for Tuesday. Utah Governor Spencer Cox is expected to provide an update on COVID-19 at his monthly press conference with PBS Utah Thursday at 10 a.m.