FILE PHOTO – two students standing side by side wearing masks. Photo by Kelly Sikkema

In Utah’s public school system, when two percent of a school’s student enrollment tests positive for the coronavirus, it is considered a COVID-19 outbreak site. That means the state will then test all students, with the permission of parents.

Students testing negative may return to class and those who test positive must be quarantined at home for two weeks.

This week Tooele High School became Utah’s third school to trigger this state-designated threshold, joining the American Preparatory Academy’s Draper 2 campus and the Syracuse Elementary School in the Davis School District.

With the Wednesday report of 1,885 new coronavirus cases in Utah since Tuesday,  the state is approaching 500,000 positive cases since the start of the pandemic.

The state reported a total of 11 new COVID deaths Wednesday, including a Box Elder County man between 65-84 years of age who was hospitalized at the time of his death.
Since the start of the pandemic 2,764 Utahns have lost their lives to the virus, including 130 deaths in northern Utah.

As of Wednesday there are 570 Utahns in hospitals with COVID-19, which is 11 fewer than Tuesday. There are 224 patients in intensive care, two fewer than Tuesday. There have been 21,158 hospitalizations in Utah the last 18 and a half months.

More than half of Utah’s population — 1.633 million — have been fully vaccinated. There were 7,487 people vaccinated since Tuesday and over 3.34 million vaccines have been administered since the start of the pandemic.

With 14,601 Utahns tested since Tuesday over 3.3 million people have been tested and almost six million total tests have been administered since the outbreak.

Currently 80,223 people in northern Utah are fully vaccinated and 173,653 vaccine doses have been administered in the district.

The northern Utah case count has reached 26,139 in Cache, Box Elder and Rich counties and 24,639 are considered to be “recovered”. Within the district 1,164 people have been hospitalized since the pandemic began.

Idaho’s Wednesday COVID update indicates 2,505 coronavirus deaths (with 20 new deaths today) and the new total of confirmed COVID-19 cases is 237,000 statewide, which includes 1,657 new cases as of Wednesday. Idaho is now 50.2 percent fully vaccinated.



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