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0000017b-652b-d50a-a3ff-f7efb02e0000KPCW's COVID-19 news coverage for Summit County and Wasatch County, Utah. 0000017b-652b-d50a-a3ff-f7efb02f0000You can also visit the Utah Department of Health, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and World Health Organization websites for additional information.

Utah Moves In The Right Direction While Preparing For The Worst

Utah is trending in the right direction for COVID-19 however a few days of positive trends isn’t enough evidence to declare a complete victory.


On Tuesday afternoon the state updated the counts of COVID-19, including a rise to 887 cases statewide, with 181 in Summit County and 51 in Wasatch County. The state has administered 18,513 tests so far, but State epidemiologist Dr. Angela Dunn says their goal is to make sure that everybody who needs to be tested for COVID-19 has the ability to be tested. 

“That includes people who have had close contact or potential exposure to somebody with COVID-19, or people who have symptoms consistent with next COVID-19 without any potential exposure,” Dunn said. 

Dunn said the state’s testing capacity has increased. The state received 2,500 returned tests on Monday, the highest to date. Results can take anywhere from 24 hours for some local labs to several days for labs elsewhere in the U.S. Dunn said that they are seeing promising numbers showing so far that social distancing is working to flatten the curve. 

“Even though our testing has increased, our positive rate still maintains at that 5% or lower rate which is really good,” Dunn continued. “However, when we talk about flattening the curve, just having a few days trend of data isn't enough to give us any really concrete evidence. We need to go at least one to two weeks before we can make good assumptions because of the 14-day incubation period of the disease.” 

The department reported that 73 people have required hospitalization during the course of COVID-19. That’s a rate of about 10% of all confirmed cases in the state. 

“Right now, our numbers are actually looking very good that if we maintain this rate, we won't see a huge strain on our health care systems that we were predicting earlier,” Dunn explained. “However, we are preparing for the possibility of a big jump in cases. We always want to prepare for that possibility to make sure that we have things in place if we do have a surge of patients. So, our preparedness team is working very closely with the division of Emergency Management to ensure that we have options beyond traditional hospitals to care for patients.” 

As of Tuesday’s briefing, five Utah residents have died as a result of COVID-19.

KPCW reporter David Boyle covers all things in the Heber Valley as well as sports and breaking news.