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)
New data is showing that by the time the omicron variant was first making its way through Utah in early-January, Utah was undercounting hospitalizations of patients.
Thursday the state reported a new record for the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients in a 24 hour period — 843 — along with an announcement they had been undercounting such patients for weeks.
“The error was caused when the Utah Healthcare Resource Management System (UHRMS) transitioned to a new reporting system last October,” the state reported. “The error has been fixed and is partially responsible for today’s increase in the number of people currently hospitalized.”
The Utah Department of Health (UDOH) Thursday report includes 7,033 new positive cases of coronavirus, 485 of those in northern Utah. Since the pandemic began, there have been 869,085 positive cases statewide.
Since Wednesday six more Utahns died of COVID-19 and from the start of the pandemic the lives of 4,097 Utahns have been lost to the virus. That includes 204 from Cache, Box Elder and Rich counties.
In addition to the 843 Utahns now hospitalized, 194 of those are in intensive care. Utah’s intensive care units are 89.1 percent full. Since the pandemic began 30,846 Utahns have been hospitalized.
The total northern Utah case count has reached 48,066, while 1,859 in the district have been hospitalized during the pandemic. There are 100,209 in Utah’s three northern counties who are totally vaccinated and 215,053 doses have been administered in the Bear River Health District.
Utah’s new rolling seven-day average for positive tests is now 7,820 a day.
The new seven-day rolling average for percent positivity of “people over people” stands at 46.7 percent while the rolling seven-day average for percent positivity of “tests over tests” is 30.4 percent.
14,481 Utahns were tested since Wednesday which means 4.75 million people have been tested and over 8.8 million total tests have been administered the last 22 months. Total tests administered since Wednesday are 35,767.
Idaho’s Thursday COVID update indicates 4,357 coronavirus deaths and the new total of confirmed COVID-19 cases is 368,665 statewide. New case counts in the three southeast Idaho counties include 2,145 total positives in Franklin County, 854 in Bear Lake County and 727 in Oneida County.