COVID-19 continues to infect steady number of Utahns

Cars line up for COVID-19 testing at the Fairpark in Salt Lake City on Saturday, Jan. 23, 2021. | Spenser Heaps, Deseret News

413 new COVID-19 cases, no new deaths reported on Saturday

COVID-19 continues to infect approximately one in every 10,000 Utahns every day, according to the Utah Department of Health.

So far in the pandemic, nearly 13% of all Utahns have been infected with the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which was first detected in China in late 2019. Utah’s first cases of COVID-19 were identified in March 2020.

On Saturday, the health department reported 413 new cases of COVID-19 and no new deaths. In all, there have been 392,509 people officially diagnosed with COVID-19 and 2,164 people who have died from the disease in Utah. The state has seen five deaths in the past week.

Nearly 1.9 million vaccines have been administered in Utah, including 27,809 since Friday’s report, with 783,872 people — about 25% of the population — fully vaccinated in the state.

Earlier this week, vaccination clinics in Utah followed guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention regarding the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine, which sidelined the vaccine until more information can be gathered after six women developed rare but severe blot clots.

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said on Thursday he hopes the pause doesn’t have a negative effect on the number of people seeking to be vaccinated in Utah, and, particularly, the number of people who become sick and die from the disease.

More than 1 million people in Utah have received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, with 954,850 people having gotten the Moderna vaccine and 139,000 who have received the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine, which is a single-dose vaccine.

Since Friday, 7,575 people in Utah were tested for the virus, adding to the more than 2.48 million tests conducted by state and local health departments and partnering organizations throughout the past 13 months.

The rolling seven-day average number of positive tests per day is now 394, with an average percent positivity of 7.6% of people being tested. About 3.8% of all tests in Utah in the last seven days return with positive results, the health department reports.

There are 140 people currently hospitalized in Utah with COVID-19, adding to the more than 15,000 Utahns who have been hospitalized with COVID-19 since the pandemic began.

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