As Utah reports 1,211 new COVID-19 cases, doctor predicts things could get worse

SALT LAKE CITY – Utah public health officials reported more than 1,000 new cases of COVID-19 for the second day in a row on Friday, and a doctor said he expected the situation to get even worse in back to school this fall.

The Utah Department of Health reported 1,211 new cases of the coronavirus on Friday, along with one more death and 351 hospitalizations. This is the highest single-day case total since 1,299 cases were reported on February 10. Before Thursday, Utah had not reported more than 1,000 cases in a single day since February 18.

7,389 other vaccinations were reported on Friday.

COVID-19-related hospitalizations have continued in a recent “disturbing” trend, said Dr Eddie Stenehjem, infectious disease physician for Intermountain Healthcare. New virus cases and hospitalizations have steadily increased over the past month, and now Intermountain Healthcare hospitals are over 85% full, according to Stenehjem. When hospitals are operating at 85-90% of their capacity, they are not very efficient, he added.

“It is certainly a worrying trend,” he said at a press conference on Friday. “We hope we can change course.”

Of the 351 COVID-19 patients hospitalized in Utah on Friday, 152 are in intensive care units, according to the health department. About 86% of intensive care beds were occupied in Utah as of Friday, including about 89% of intensive care beds at the state’s 16 referral hospitals. At this capacity, hospitals are virtually running out of intensive care beds as they are no longer able to staff for more beds.

If Utah continues on its current course, the state will likely be back in the same situation it was in December and January, Stenehjem said. Utah experienced its worst pandemic peak in months last winter.

With the start of the school year in a few weeks, things could get even worse, Stenehjem said. There is new science that suggests the COVID-19 delta variant could be as contagious as chickenpox. If so, the disease could spread wildly among schoolchildren, who in turn could bring the disease home and spread it among their parents, grandparents and other family members, he added. .

He recommends that anyone with school-aged children make sure their children wear masks when they return to school. With a more communicable variant of the disease, previous public health measures used in schools to prevent the spread of the disease – such as spacing offices and increasing ventilation – might not be as effective, a declared Stenehjem.

If you are fully vaccinated and infected with the delta variant, you can still spread it, he said, adding that he and his family members, who are fully vaccinated, will wear masks in public places. interiors because of that.

“Basically everyone should wear a mask indoors,” he said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that fully vaccinated people continue to wear masks in indoor public places, reversing the course on its previous guidelines.

But Stenehjem stressed that the pandemic has presented rapidly changing and evolving conditions as scientists and public health officials attempt to track a dangerous virus that continues to mutate.

“It’s an environment that is changing so rapidly,” he said. “You see scientists doing their best. “

Stenehjem said that even as an infectious disease doctor who has studied things like COVID-19 for decades, he cannot keep up with all of the scientific literature that is published. When you see the CDC or other public health agencies turning the tide, it’s because they’re trying to keep up with changing and evolving scientific knowledge, he said.

The CDC will almost certainly change its focus on more things in the future, Stenehjem said, but people need to accept that it will happen and trust that scientists are doing their best.

“We see science moving rapidly before our eyes, and it’s amazing and it’s fast,” he said. “I recognize that it is really difficult for the general public, and I can tell you that we are doing our best.”

Utah’s seven-day moving average for positive cases is now 755. The positive test rate per day for this period calculated with the person-to-person method is now 14.7%. The rate of positive tests per day for this period calculated with the “test on test” method is now 10.4%.

A total of 1,668,260 Utahns, or about 52 percent of the state’s total population, have now received at least a first dose of the vaccine. A total of 1,478,589 Utahns, or about 46.1% of the total population, are now fully vaccinated. For vaccine-eligible Utahns aged 12 and older, 64.4% have received at least a first dose and 57% are fully immunized.

The death reported on Friday was a woman from Salt Lake County who was between 65 and 84 and who had not been hospitalized when she died.

Of the 2,917,728 people tested for COVID-19 in Utah so far, 14.8% have tested positive for COVID-19. The total number of tests carried out in Utah since the start of the pandemic now stands at 5,312,717, an increase of 12,646 since Thursday. Of those, 7,589 were tests of people who had not previously been tested for COVID-19.

Friday’s totals give Utah 432,467 total confirmed cases, with 18,567 total hospitalizations and 2,451 total deaths from the disease.