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For the second day in a row, more than 40,000 COVID-19 vaccines were administered in Utah. And the number of people fully vaccinated now exceeds 540,000.
At the same time, the Utah Department of Health reported six more deaths caused by the coronavirus. All six were patients aged 65 years or older and four of the deaths occurred before March 1 and were only recently confirmed to be COVID-19 related.
Case counts in Utah have risen to levels not seen since September, Dr. Eddie Stenehjem, an infectious disease doctor at Intermountain Healthcare, said Friday. “This is a good place to be in Utah right now.”
Dose of vaccines administered last day / total doses administered • 40,049 / 1,450,263.
Fully vaccinated Utahns • 541,293.
Cases reported last day • 422.
Deaths reported last day • Six.
Salt Lake County reported two deaths: a man and a woman, each between the ages of 65 and 84.
Four other counties reported one death each: a woman aged 65 to 84 in Davis County, a woman aged 65 to 84 in Millard County, a woman over 85 in Utah County and a man over of 85 in Weber County.
Tests reported last day • 5,761 people were tested for the first time. A total of 14,258 people were tested.
Hospitalizations reported last day • 138. This exceeds two from Thursday. Of those currently hospitalized, 46 are in intensive care units, four fewer than on Thursday.
Percentage of positive tests • According to the original method of the state, the rate is 7.3%. This is slightly above the seven-day average of 6.9%.
The new state method counts all test results, including repeated tests by the same individual. Friday’s rate was 3.0%, down from the seven-day average of 3.4%.
[Read more: Utah is changing how it measures the rate of positive COVID-19 tests. Here’s what that means.]
Total so far • 386,550 cases; 2,131 dead; 15,573 hospitalizations; 2,400,410 people tested.
“This is the time to be optimistic,” Stenehjem said. “It simply came to our notice then. They have been elevated … we return to the level we had at the beginning of the pandemic, around September. Our hospitalizations have certainly improved. ”
Health experts are concerned, Stenehjem said Friday during the COVID-19 community’s weekly meeting on Facebook Live that spring break and new coronavirus variants could cause a “fourth wave” of cases. However, “at this time, an increase in cases may seem different from an increase in November and December,” Stenehjem said, because a minor illness is likely to occur in the elderly because they have been vaccinated against virus.
Utah is a week away from April 10, the date on which Utah’s political leaders ended the state’s mask mandate, but Stenehjem recommended that Utahs continue to wear their masks and practice social distancing in public.
“There will be no difference in community transmission between April 9 and 10,” Stenehjem said.
Intermountain’s rules require visitors, patients and staff to wear masks, and those rules will remain in effect after April 10, Stenehjem said. “We’ll take off our masks when epidemiology tells us it’s okay to do it,” he said.
Although Governor Cox signed the bill that passed the Utah legislature that ends the term of the masks on April 10, he still thinks masks are a good idea. This week, in a note, Cox told state employees that they will wear masks at their state offices until May 31st.
Also Friday, the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced it would provide Utah with more than $ 17.1 million in additional public assistance funding for the state’s response to COVID-19. Funding was made available following a major disaster statement released Sunday.
To date, FEMA has provided Utah with a total of $ 108.5 million in aid to the state’s COVID-19 response. Information about FEMA’s public assistance program can be found at www.fema.gov/assistance/public.