Dr. Angela Dunn, state epidemiologist, speaks during the weekly COVID briefing at Northrop Grumman in Roy on Thursday, April 1, 2021. With Dr. Dunn is Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson and Gov. Spencer Cox.
Tuesday the Utah Department of Health reported 315 new coronavirus positive cases plus eight more deaths from the virus. Four of the deaths occurred prior to March 20, 2021. There were 11 new cases in northern Utah and the total positive cases in Cache, Box Elder and Rich counties has grown to 21,150.
Of concern statewide are the rising COVID-19 cases in the Davis, Wasatch and Weber-Morgan health departments.
During a virtual news conference Chief Medical Operations Officer for the University of Utah hospital Dr. Russell Vinik responded to reporters’ questions.
“We really don’t know the answer,” he said. “When we see this in a few counties, it means there’s a bit of an outbreak in that population relative to the rest of the state.”
Vinik said there has been “a dramatic rise” in what is known as the U.K. variant in Utah while there has been a steady decline in other coronavirus cases.
In other statewide news, Salt Lake County announced that State Epidemiologist Dr. Angela Dunn has been named the new Director of the Salt Lake County Health Department.
There have been 393,272 positive coronavirus cases in Utah the last 13 months.
The state health department said 18,065 more vaccines were administered since Monday and vaccinations in Utah now total almost 1.92 million. The number of fully vaccinated Utahns is 799,291.
Almost 2.5 million Utahns have been tested as of Tuesday and there have been over 4.5 million total tests administered in the state.
Statewide COVID-19 hospitalizations is 138, the same as Monday, while 57 of those are being treated for the virus are in intensive care units, which is three more than Monday.
The rolling seven-day average for positive tests is 375 per day. The rolling seven-day average for percent positivity of people over people is 6.7 percent. The rolling seven-day average for percent positivity of “tests over tests” is 3.2 percent, which is when all results are included.
Idaho’s latest numbers show 185,227 confirmed coronavirus cases and 2,022 COVID-19 deaths. In the three southeast Idaho counties case counts include 1,167 positive cases in Franklin County, 376 in Bear Lake County and 353 in Oneida County.