With Utah facing a critical coronavirus testing shortage, the state epidemiologist Friday recommended Utahns with COVID-19 symptoms should not get tested, but instead stay home and isolate.
“They really should stay home, act as if they have COVID and not necessarily need to go get tested,” said Dr. Leisha Nolan. She added those with underlying conditions should still get tested.
Utah’s COVID-19 death toll grew closer to 4,000 since the start of the pandemic on Friday, with the report of seven more coronavirus fatalities since Thursday. That puts the total COVID deaths the last 22 months at 3,951.
With 11,128 new COVID positive cases in the state’s Friday report there have now been 750,334 cases since the pandemic began.
Statewide Covid hospitalizations reported Friday amount to 672, which is the highest count for any day during the pandemic. Among those currently hospitalized, 182 are in intensive care, four fewer than Thursday. UDOH reports that statewide, 91.9 percent of all ICU beds are occupied.
With 11,201 people vaccinated since Thursday, the number of Utahns fully vaccinated is now 1.95?, almost 53 percent of the state’s population. Almost 4.7 million doses have been administered.
Currently 98,884 in northern Utah are totally vaccinated and 212,079 total doses have been administered in the Bear River Health District. Total population in the three counties of the district is 186,818.
More than 4.5 million people in Utah have been tested and 26,278 Utahns were tested since Thursday and over 8.3 million total tests have been administered the last 22 months.
Utah’s new rolling seven-day average for positive tests is 9,827 a day.
The latest seven-day rolling average for percent positivity of “people over people” is 37.2 percent while the rolling seven-day average for percent positivity of “tests over tests” is 25.6 percent.
Idaho’s latest COVID update indicates 3,217 coronavirus deaths and a new total of confirmed COVID-19 cases is 274,560 statewide. New case counts in the three southeast Idaho counties include 1,968 total positives in Franklin County, 778 in Bear Lake County and 641 in Oneida County.