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The number of Utahns fully vaccinated against the coronavirus continues to inch up, but so does the state’s death toll. The state health department reported Thursday that four more people have died of COVID-19.
Just over 35% of the state’s population is fully vaccinated, having received either both doses of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines or the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine. And almost 44% of the total population has received at least one dose.
Vaccine doses administered in past day/total doses administered • 19,236 / 2,464,088.
Utahns fully vaccinated • 1,144,733.
Cases reported in past day • 266.
Deaths reported in past day • Four: a man between the ages of 45-64 in Davis County; a man 65-84 in Summit County; a man 25-44 in Washington County; and a man 85-plus in Weber County.
Tests reported in past day • 4,445 people were tested for the first time. A total of 9,128 people were tested.
Hospitalizations reported in past day • 139. That’s three more than on Wednesday. Of those currently hospitalized, 57 are in intensive care units, one more than on Wednesday.
Percentage of positive tests • Under the state’s original method, the rate is 6.0%. That’s lower than the seven-day average of 6.3%.
The state’s new method counts all test results, including repeated tests of the same individual. Thursday’s rate was 2.9%, lower than 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.]
Totals to date • 403,684 cases; 2,279 deaths; 16,615 hospitalizations; 2,653,810 people tested.
Utah’s ethnic minority groups still lag behind the state’s majority white population in getting vaccinated against COVID-19, Gov. Spencer Cox said Thursday, at his monthly news conference at the studios of KUED.
Cox said that 42% of Utah’s Asian adult population has received at least one dose of the vaccine. Among Hispanic adults, 35% have gotten one shot, while 24% of Black adults and 23.4% of Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander adults in Utah have received a dose.
Those numbers are compared to 50% of white adults in Utah who have received at least one dose of the vaccine, the governor said. “We’re making great progress there, but we still have quite a ways to go.”
Utah is ahead of the nation, he said, in getting the Pfizer vaccine into the arms of 12- to 15-year-olds.
An estimated 9% of kids in that group in Utah have gotten a dose since the federal government approved the Pfizer vaccine last week for kids 12-15, Cox said. That’s the highest in the country, which is averaging about 4% of adolescents in that age range getting the shot, he said.
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