FILE PHOTO – man blows his nose. Photo by Brittany Colette on Unsplash
As the pandemic continues into a second year of battling COVID-19, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report less than 2,000 lab-confirmed cases of the flu during the current season. By this time of the year in a typical flu season, the U.S. could have seen more than 200,000 lab-confirmed cases.
Scientists say the explanation might be that in fighting COVID-19 with masking and social distancing probably stopped transmission of the flu.
Watching the new coronavirus numbers in Utah, there have been 10 COVID-19 deaths in the last seven days, a stark contrast days in Dec. 2020 and January 2021 when as many as 30 Utahns died from the virus.
The Sunday COVID-19 report from the state health department includes one coronavirus death since Sunday, leaving the state’s list of total COVID deaths in the pandemic at 2,224.
Also Sunday, the state reported there were 232 new positive COVID-19 cases detected statewide, 16 of them from northern Utah.
The rolling seven-day average for positive tests is 336 a day. The rolling seven-day average for percent positivity of “people over people” is 6.4 percent. The rolling seven-day average for percent positivity of “tests over tests” is 3.4 percent
Utah’s current COVID-19 hospitalizations on Sunday are now at 139 people, the same as Saturday. There are 63 people in intensive care units which is five more than Saturday. A total of 16,361 people have been hospitalized during the pandemic.
The state reported over 2.3 million total vaccines have been administered in Utah.
The number of Utahns fully vaccinated has grown to 1,048,036.
Over the course of the pandemic there have been 400,352 positive cases in Utah.
Since Saturday 3,558 people were tested for the first time and a total of 6,510 tests were administered. Over 2.6 million Utahns have been tested as of Sunday and there have been more than 4.7 million total tests administered in the state.
In Idaho 2,061 residents have lost their lives to the virus and there are 188,786 confirmed coronavirus cases. In the three southeast Idaho counties case counts include 1,182 positive cases in Franklin County, 382 in Bear Lake County and 360 in Oneida County.