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Utah is going into the Fourth of July holiday in an unenviable place: on a higher plateau for COVID-19 cases.
Over a nine-day period, between June 25 and July 3, the rolling seven-day average for COVID-19 cases — the way public health experts track trends — has been above 500. On Friday, the Utah Department of Health’s daily count of 596 new cases brought the seven-day average to 545.1 per day.
Friday’s new cases upped the state’s total to 23,866 since the pandemic began in March.
The department also announced Friday that five more Utahns had died from COVID-19, raising the state’s death toll to 181 people.
One of the five new fatalities was a man, between ages 25 and 44, who was a resident of a long-term care facility in Weber County.
The other four were between ages 65 and 84. One, a man from Summit County, was hospitalized when he died. One, a woman, was a resident of a long-term care facility in Washington County. The other two, a man and a woman, were residents of long-term care facilities in Salt Lake County.
Back on Memorial Day, May 25, the seven-day average was 156.9 cases a day. That holiday weekend, according to the state’s epidemiologist, Dr. Angela Dunn, is when Utah’s current surge started. The seven-day average hit 476 cases per day — more than triple the Memorial Day level — on June 21, and hasn’t dipped below that number since.
Friday’s report marks the 10th day in a row that the daily statewide case count has been over 450.
In Utah’s most populous county, Salt Lake County, the daily case level has been above 200 for the past 10 days. The county’s seven-day average hit 278.2 cases a day Friday.
Salt Lake County has had 12,050 cases of COVID-19 since the pandemic began. That represents just over half of all cases statewide, even though the county contains about a third of Utah’s population.
Another 24 people have been hospitalized with COVID-19, the Utah Department of Health reported. There were 186 people still in the hospital with the disease Thursday, with another 46 hospitalized people whose cases are “under investigation.” (Hospitalization figures are a day behind case counts.) The state reports 52.4% of Utah’s hospital beds, and 64.8% of its intensive care unit beds, are occupied.
Since the first COVID-19 cases were reported in March, 1,529 people have been hospitalized with the disease in Utah.
Another 10,250 people have been tested for COVID-19, bringing the total number of tests up to 356,636. The positive test rate for the day is 5.8%, and the rate since the pandemic began is 6.7%.
Utah health officials consider 13,408 of the state’s cases “recovered,” using the definition of being alive three weeks after being diagnosed.
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