Utah reports more than 1,800 new COVID-19 cases, 9 deaths Thursday

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SALT LAKE CITY – Utah health officials on Thursday reported 1,805 new cases of COVID-19, as well as nine deaths.

School-aged children accounted for 418 of the latest cases – 191 were children aged 5 to 10, 100 were aged 11 to 13 and 127 were aged 14 to 17, according to a daily update provided by the Utah Department of Health.

The seven-day moving average for positive tests is now 1,436 per day, and the average percentage of positivity of those tested is 15.4%.

Although Utah has seen a plateau in cases, two critical care nurses pleaded for support Thursday as they say they remain overwhelmed by hospitalizations.

Matthew Pain, a nurse at Intermountain Medical Center in Murray, discussed the daily chores and workload of his job in videos taken inside the hospital, which were provided to reporters by the hospital system.

Her job is to provide oxygen to patients with COVID-19, manage their medications, and help them with countless other activities. He said he woke up to work “just long enough to get here, because we are exhausted”.

“The kind of what I have to plan is, am I going to have COVID patients today? Am I going to be the lucky one who doesn’t have COVID today? “

He said he was going to work by mentally preparing himself for the question, “Will this be a day when a patient dies?”

Standing outside an empty hospital room, Pain said rooms typically stay empty for more than two hours before a new patient arrives.

Maddie Blackburn, another nurse at Intermountain Medical Center, said caring for patients with COVID-19 is becoming “the new normal – which isn’t great.”

“I’ve seen more deaths in the last half of my career than I’ve ever seen in my first half, and it’s sad to say I’m good now. I’m good at caring for patients who are under their last stage, and it’s really tough, ”said Blackburn.

She said the difference between her first 18 months working in an intensive care unit and the last 18 months is that patients would stay a week or two, and they were considered long-term. But now COVID-19 patients sometimes stay there for months, she said.

Blackburn said she had to learn to cope with the stress of her job and find new ways to nurture joy because her job was so difficult.

She said she wanted people to know that even as cases go down, hospitals remain full. And healthcare workers feel “defeated” and hurt.

“We literally do everything for these patients and then they’re gone.… It’s hard to do some of the things that we have to do,” Blackburn said.

She said healthcare workers need residents to “do things around the house” to help them. Blackburn urged residents to receive the COVID-19 vaccine and to express his gratitude to those who work in healthcare.

Latest data from Utah

Health workers have administered an additional 13,347 doses of the vaccine since Wednesday’s report, bringing the total doses administered in the state to 3,539,053.

The state health department has announced that it has changed the way it calculates risk ratios for unvaccinated residents on the statewide COVID-19 dashboard. The ministry is now reporting age-adjusted risk ratios.

“This is an important update that more accurately reflects the risk to the general population. The change will result in higher risk ratios for unvaccinated people of being hospitalized and dying. Indeed, the previous method, which did not adjust for age, skewed the data on older people who are more likely to be both vaccinated and hospitalized or to die from COVID-19 than younger people. . By adjusting the age, we better reflect the actual risk for all Utahns, ”department officials said in a statement.

According to new age-adjusted data, in the past 28 days, unvaccinated residents faced 16.1 times the risk of dying from the coronavirus, 12.2 times the risk of being hospitalized and 6.9 times more likely to test positive.

Since February 1, the unvaccinated have seen 9.8 times the risk of dying from COVID-19, 7.8 times the risk of being hospitalized from COVID-19, and 4.1 times the risk of test positive for COVID-19 than those vaccinated, the state health department said.

Thursday’s cases included 446 “revolutionary” cases, meaning they had been fully vaccinated more than two weeks ago. The state also confirmed 25 new revolutionary hospitalizations and two revolutionary deaths, according to the data.

State health officials and doctors have noted that receiving the vaccine does not mean someone will not contract the coronavirus, but in most cases, it protects against serious illness. The vaccine also does not cause a person to contract COVID-19.

Since vaccines became available to the public earlier this year, the state has confirmed 20,252 breakthrough cases, 1,036 breakthrough hospitalizations and 133 breakthrough deaths. There have been 2,983 COVID-19 deaths in total in Utah during the pandemic.

As of Thursday, 567 patients were receiving treatment for the disease in Utah hospitals, eight fewer than the day before.

The latest deaths were:

• A woman from Iron County, between 45 and 64, who was not hospitalized when she died.
• Three men from Salt Lake County, aged 65 to 84, all hospitalized.
• A Salt Lake County man, 45-64, hospitalized.
• A man from Sevier County, 45-64, hospitalized.
• A Utah County woman, over 85, hospitalized.
• Wasatch County man, 65-84, not hospitalized.
• Washington County woman, 65-84, hospitalized.

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