It’s been one year since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global health pandemic. While Utah’s cases remained low for the first 6 months, the state saw a steep uptick in the fall. However, since January new cases have started to decline.
After weeks of decline in cases, the Utah Department of Health announced just under 646 new COVID-19 cases Thursday, which is 35 more cases than the state saw at the same time last week.
During the governor’s weekly COVID-19 briefing, State Epidemiologist Angela Dun said while Thursday’s count is up week over week, there’s still a decline in the 7-day rolling average of new cases.
"It has been a very long and roller coaster of a year," Dunn said. "But we have great news today, we continue to see a decrease in our case counts. We are now at 524 new cases per day - that is a decrease from 558 from last week. This represents a bit of a plateau."
Percent positivity for COVID-19 tests are also down since last week. On average about 4% of “tests over tests” are coming back positive, down almost a percent. The average percent positivity for “people over people” is 8%, down about 1.5%.
There were 8,139 people tested for the first time, with 18,923 total tests administered.
In the Wasatch Back, Summit County reported nine new cases, which is the same as last Thursday.
Wasatch County reported seven new cases - up compared to last Thursday when the county saw four.
Utah’s Department of Health reported 23 new deaths, but noted that 15 of the deaths happened before Feb. 11. To date, 2,015 Utahns have died due to COVID-19.
The department also reported 28 new hospitalizations. There are 167 people in the hospital for COVID-19, in the state. Around 71% of all referral center ICU beds are in use.
There were 34,290 people vaccinated for COVID-19 since Wednesday. Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson said during the briefing, this is the most people vaccinated in one day.
"So the next few days, we're going to reach a really cool milestone. And that will be our 1,000,000th dose delivered or administered," Henderson said. "And it's going to be hard for us to nail down specifically when that's going to occur but it will be coming in the in the next few days. And we're really excited about that milestone."
Summit County is registering to vaccinate residents 40-years or older and people with certain underlying medical conditions. Wasatch County is registering people 50-years or older and those with certain comorbidities.
