Gov. Spencer Cox speaks during a briefing on COVID-19 at the Capitol in Salt Lake City on Thursday, April 29, 2021.
During his weekly press conference Gov. Spencer Cox said Thursday that mass vaccination sites will still be available in Utah but starting Thursday the state is shifting its approach in order to get the vaccines to more people.
He said the state has plenty of doses available to support this new initiative.
State Epidemiologist Dr. Angela Dunn issued a cautionary note regarding a current outbreak at Elk Ridge School in the Jordan School District.
“This outbreak has really been a huge burden and inconvenience for the school, for the students and for the parents,” Dr. Dunn exclaimed. “So, it’s a reminder that we’re still in the middle of a pandemic and it’s more important now than ever to get vaccinated if you are eligible.
“The more people that are vaccinated, the less COVID spread we’ll have. And if there’s less virus spreading around, there’s less opportunity for that virus to mutate and for the variants to take hold here in Utah.”
Thursday the Utah Department of Health reported seven new COVID deaths including a Cache County female, between 65-84, who was not hospitalized at the time of death.
It is the 97th coronavirus fatality in northern Utah.
The number of new positive COVID-19 cases reported Thursday was 463 and 17 of them were detected in northern Utah, leaving 21,356 total cases in the district.
The seven fatalities reported Thursday brings Utah’s COVID death toll to 2,197.
The number of Utahns who are fully vaccinated is 924,158 which is about 40 percent of eligible Utahns who are 16 and older. Exactly 26,895 new vaccine doses were administered since Wednesday and vaccinations in Utah now total almost 2.1 million.
Over the course of the pandemic there have been 396,985 positive cases in Utah.
The Thursday vaccinations update from the Bear River Health Department shows 31.3 percent of all adults in the district have been immunized and 114,013 total doses have been administered in Cache, Box Elder and Rich counties.
Idaho’s latest numbers show 187,269 confirmed coronavirus cases and 2,045 COVID-19 deaths. In the three southeast Idaho counties case counts include 1,178 positive cases in Franklin County, 380 in Bear Lake County and 356 in Oneida County.