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Utah’s COVID-19 death toll topped 2,500 over the weekend.
According to the Utah Department of Health, there were nine more deaths on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, bringing the total to 2,503.
(The health department no longer reports COVID-19 numbers on weekends. On Monday, it reported numbers for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.)
There were also 2,013 new cases of the coronavirus over the weekend – 948 Friday, 662 Saturday and 403 Sunday. (Testing slows down on weekends, especially Sunday.) The UDOH also added five more cases to the state’s total due to reports updated before Friday.
The number of Utahns fully vaccinated against COVID-19 now exceeds 1.5 million. That’s just over 46% of the state’s total population.
According to UDOH, there have been 5,841 “groundbreaking” cases of COVID-19 in Utah – people who contracted the virus two weeks or more after being fully vaccinated. This represents about 1 in 258 people who are fully vaccinated.
Of that number, 353 have been hospitalized – about 1 in 4,261 people who are fully vaccinated. And there were 21 deaths, or about 1 in 71,624 people.
Vaccine doses administered in the last three days / total doses administered • 18 877 / 3,084,676.
Fully vaccinated Utahns • 1,504,113.
Cases reported in the last three days • 2.013.
Deaths reported in the last three days • New.
Salt Lake County has reported three other deaths: two men aged 45 to 64 and a man aged 65 to 84.
There have been two deaths in Davis County, two men aged 45 to 64, as well as two deaths in Utah County, a man and a woman aged 65 to 84.
The other deaths were a 45-64-year-old Box Elder County man and a 65-84 year-old Weber County man.
Tests reported in the last three days • 14,278 people were tested for the first time. A total of 23,577 people were tested.
Hospitalizations reported in the past three days • 389. That’s five more than Friday. Of those currently hospitalized, 160 are in intensive care, four fewer than on Friday.
Percentage of positive tests • According to the original state method, the rate is 14.1%. This is slightly lower than the seven-day average of 14.4%.
The state’s new method counts all test results, including repeat testing of the same individual. Friday’s rate was 8.5%, below the seven-day average of 10.3%.
[Read more: Utah is changing how it measures the rate of positive COVID-19 tests. Here’s what that means.]
Totals to date • 440,497 cases; 2,503 deaths; 19,004 hospitalizations; 2,974,486 people tested.
In a new study, doctors at Intermountain Healthcare found that monoclonal antibody treatment reduced serious illnesses and high-risk COVID-19 hospitalizations by more than 50% – and likely saved some patients from the death of the virus.
“They work best when given very early in the course of symptoms, when the impact of the virus is at its greatest – and in patients who do not have antibodies to the virus itself,” said said infectious disease specialist Dr Brandon Webb. physician at Intermountain, and lead author of the study.
The study – published in the July issue of the medical journal Open Forum Infectious Diseases – compared the results of 594 patients who received monoclonal antibodies to those of 5,536 COVID-19 patients who did not. The treatment has been available since last fall, and Webb said it was important “for us to understand if these products actually work in the real world and if they are safe.”
The study, Webb said, found the infusion therapy to be “well tolerated,” with 1% of those who received it having an adverse reaction – and most of those reactions were mild and easily treated. “The biggest takeaway” from the study, said Webb, is that “these products are most effective when targeted at the onset of” symptoms. So, people who start to experience symptoms of COVID-19 should get tested as soon as possible, he said, so that they can “have access to these and other treatments.”
Monoclonal antibodies – doctors’ best-known brands are bamlanivimab, made by Eli Lilly, and Regeneron’s casirivimab / imdevimab – “mimic the body’s natural antibody response,” Webb told a virtual press conference Monday. This is different from COVID-19 vaccines, which are designed to jump-start the body’s immune system by creating its own antibodies.
Because of this difference, Webb said, monoclonal antibodies generally work best on people who haven’t been vaccinated.
Medications for treatments are plentiful, Webb said. There may be a bottleneck at the places where the infusion procedure is done, he said, because those places also provide intravenous treatments – like chemotherapy – to other patients. Providers follow a set of eligibility criteria to target patients most likely to benefit from treatment, he said.
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