While hospitalizations due to the coronavirus continue to mount in Utah, medical researchers at universities nationwide continue to search for medications to effectively treat the symptoms of COVID-19 (Photo courtesy of JohnsHopkins)
Throughout Utah, and across the country, omicron sub variants continue their rapid spread, extending a surge in cases that has no end in sight.
Figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate the BA.4 and BA.5 variants accounted for almost 15 percent of all of the nation’s new cases the last seven days.
The state health department’s weekly COVID-19 report Thursday shows 12 more Utahns died from the virus since last week, which is eight more than the week before. Utah’s 7,401 new positive cases in the new report are nearly 1,700 more than the previous week.
As a way to monitor the severity of COVID outbreaks state officials continue to watch hospitalizations and emergency room visits and numbers continue to increase in both categories.
There was an average 1,073 positive cases a day over the last week, up from 817 a day the week before.
Almost 2.4 million Utahns — or 62 percent of the state’s population — are fully vaccinated.
In Utah, over the 27 months of the pandemic, there have been more than 962,000 cases, 4,793 deaths and 35,211 hospitalizations.
A total of 195 new COVID cases were included in the latest weekly report from the Bear River Health District, which includes Cache, Box Elder and Rich counties. Among the 186,000 who live in the three counties, there have been 52,467 coronavirus cases, 247 deaths and 2,084 hospitalizations. More than 60 percent of the population, ages 5+, are fully vaccinated.