FILE PHOTO: Young man putting on a mask. Photo by Kobby Mendez
For the first time the Utah Department of Health (UDOH) added new information to its daily report that compares risk ratios of those who are vaccinated and those who are not.
“In the last 28 days, people who are unvaccinated are at 7.6 times greater risk of dying from COVID-19, 6.9 times greater risk of being hospitalized due to COVID-19, and five times greater risk of testing positive for COVID-19 than vaccinated people,” said a prepared statement from UDOH.
“Since Feb. 1, 2021, people who are unvaccinated are at 10.7 times greater risk of dying from COVID-19, 6.2 times greater risk of being hospitalized due to COVID-19, and 5.9 times greater risk of testing positive for COVID-19 than vaccinated people.”
Also Thursday, leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints called on its members to be vaccinated and to wear masks.
“We want to do all we can to limit the spread of these viruses,” the First Presidency wrote. “We know that protection from the diseases they cause can only be achieved by immunizing a very high percentage of the population.”
It was another day with inflated case counts as the state reported 1,243 new coronavirus infections Thursday, the most in five months, pushing the total of cases during the pandemic to over 443,000.
With the report Thursday of three new deaths, all involving Utah county residents, the COVID death toll reached 2,521 in Utah. There have been 118 coronavirus deaths in northern Utah.
For the second straight day 53 new COVID cases were detected in Cache, Box Elder and Rich counties. The district’s total case count stands at 23,664 and there are now 22,925 people in the district considered to be “recovered”.
Currently 73,971 people in Utah’s three northern counties are fully vaccinated. More than 159,000 vaccine doses have been administered in the district.
The state reported Thursday that over 1.53 million Utahns are fully vaccinated.
Idaho’s Thursday COVID update lists 2,236 coronavirus deaths in the state. The new total of confirmed COVID-19 cases is 206,523. Case counts in the three counties in southeast Idaho include 1,267 positive cases in Franklin County, 432 in Bear Lake County and 390 in Oneida County.