As 30 more COVID-19 deaths are reported, rate of new cases in Utah holds steady

Thirty more Utahns have died from the coronavirus, state health officials reported Thursday – a record increase in a single day.

Utah’s death toll from COVID-19 stood at 1,126 on Thursday, marking the end of the virus’s deadliest two weeks since the start of the pandemic.

With 3,203 new cases of the coronavirus, the rate of new diagnoses in Utah has remained stable at 2,570 cases per day, the Utah Department of Health reported.

Hospitalizations were held steady with 556 Utah patients admitted concurrently, UDOH reported. A total of 9,791 patients have been hospitalized in Utah for COVID-19, up from more than 600 last week.

Stil, Dr Angela Dunn, state epidemiologist, told a press conference Thursday: “Our hospital intensive care units continue to operate at full capacity.” That, combined with the 30 deaths reported on Thursday, are indicators that “while there is a lot of hope on the horizon with the vaccine, we still have a long way to go,” Dunn said.

The UDOH dashboard on the number of COVID-19 cases will now include the number of Utahn who have received the vaccine. As of noon as of Thursday, officials reported that 407 Utahns had been vaccinated.

Over the past week, 22.26% of all tests came back positive – the lowest rate since December 1, but high enough to indicate that a large number of infected people are not tested and may spread the disease. virus unintentionally, according to state officials said.

There were 12,885 new test results reported on Thursday, slightly above the weeklong average of about 12,300 new tests per day.

UDOH Acting Director Rich Saunders said Rich County in far north Utah will go from low to high transmission, based on transmission rates from the past two weeks. The change means that 26 counties in Utah are at the high level and three are at the low level.

As health officials learned more about managing the spread of the virus, they realized that “we may have quarantined too many of them,” Saunders said of the students in Utah, in announcing extensions and changes in public health orders.

The statewide mask requirement will continue, he said.

But when schools resume classes after the holidays, there will be a new threshold for deciding when to act during an outbreak, he said. Schools with 1,500 or more inhabitants will meet the 1% threshold, while smaller schools will continue to use the 15-case threshold.

In addition, under new “test-for-stay” protocols announced by Saunders, students and staff at schools affected by an outbreak will be offered a rapid antigen test. Those who test negative can stay for in-person learning, and those who test positive or decline the test will be sent home for online learning. & Nbsp;

The state will continue its “test-to-play” protocols for student athletes. In schools where these protocols were in place, Saunders said, the rate of positivity testing was paltry 1.6%. “Test-to-play” protocols will be offered for sports and other extracurricular activities, Saunders said.

All students will be tested within 10 days of returning to campus after winter break, Saunders said. Policy should encourage students to “be careful” while on vacation, he said.