Gov. Spencer Cox speaks at the PBS Utah Governor’s Monthly News Conference at the Eccles Broadcast Center in Salt Lake City on Thursday, July 15, 2021.
Nearly 700 new positive coronavirus cases were reported Thursday by the state health department (UDOH) as Utah Gov. Spencer Cox emphasized again during his monthly press briefing that the key to slowing the growing case counts is vaccinating more Utahns.
“I’m grateful President Trump got the vaccine. But I don’t think we can take credit for getting the vaccine and then tell people there’s something wrong with the vaccine and you shouldn’t be getting it,” Gov. Cox exclaimed. “That doesn’t make sense to me. I think it’s ridiculous what’s happening.
“We have these talking heads who’ve gotten the vaccine and they’re telling people not to get the vaccine. That kind of stuff is ridiculous, it’s dangerous and damaging and it’s killing people.”
The Governor said stories are growing across Utah about unvaccinated people who are contracting the disease.
“We just keep pleading and asking people; we know why the cases are going up and we know why hospitalizations are going up,” Gov. Cox added. “We need more people to get vaccinated. And I promise you the disease is worse than the vaccine. I can’t make it more clear than that, the disease is far worse than the vaccine.”
The Thursday UDOH report indicates 693 new cases were detected statewide while the total cases during 16 months of the pandemic number almost 422,000.
Recently the number of hospitalizations have increased daily with 258 people in hospitals with the virus, which is 17 more than Wednesday. Of those patients 101 are in intensive care, the same as Wednesday.
There were four new COVID-19 deaths in the last 24 hours and now 2,410 Utahns have lost their lives to the virus since the outbreak.
The Bear River Health Department reported 17 new cases since Wednesday. A total of 22,588 residents of Cache, Box Elder and Rich Counties have contracted the virus.
As of Thursday 54.1 percent of all the district’s residents are fully vaccinated (70,338 people) including 56.6 percent of Cache County residents, 48.5 percent in Box Elder County and 48.0 percent in Rich County.
There was another spike in the the rolling seven-day average, up to 519 cases a day.
No new COVID-19 deaths were reported in Idaho the last 24 hours — there have been 2,165 coronavirus deaths with 196,489 confirmed COVID-19 cases. Case counts in the three counties in southeast Idaho include 1,246 positive cases in Franklin County, 404 in Bear Lake County and 368 in Oneida County.