MURRAY – The current increase in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations is a sign of an increase in vacations, according to Dr. Eddie Stenehjem, an infectious disease physician at Intermountain Healthcare.
How bad it gets depends on what the Utahns do to prevent it from spreading.
“We anticipate that January will be quite difficult from the point of view of hospitalization capacity,” said Stenehjem.
As the number of COVID-19 cases increases, he said, there is usually an interval of seven to 10 days before hospitalizations increase, which is happening now.
The Utah Department of Health estimated that there were 53,597 active cases of COVID-19 in the state on Thursday. The average continuous number of positive cases per day over seven days was 2,952, while the rate of continuous positive testing increased to 32.7%.
“Without a doubt, this is a wave of, I would say, the holidays, from December 24 until the New Year,” said Stenehjem.
The case count, positivity rate and now hospitalizations are increasing again after a fall in mid-December.
Here we go …. post-holiday increase. https://t.co/8TgvlSyXcR
– Eddie Stenehjem (@E_Stenehjem) January 7, 2021
“Now we are beginning to see this tick in hospitalizations, both in state data and in Intermountain’s internal data,” he said.
Stenehjem said that this is the wave of vacations they have been waiting for. “If you look at the trend line, it is going up again,” he said.
Patients at the hospital are telling doctors how they believe they contracted the virus.
“‘Yes, I had a holiday meeting … A few days later, someone got sick,'” said Stenehjem.
They expected hospitalizations to drop further in December to make room for patients during this increase, but it did not. The hospital is again above the 85% limit, which is the hospital’s functional capacity.
“Unfortunately, we anticipate that this increase will continue and we will begin to see more and more cases, which will lead to more hospitalizations and, as we know, will eventually lead to more deaths,” said Stenehjem.
The duration of the outbreak depends on how far the virus has spread in the past week and how quickly everyone returns to practices of social distance and limited meetings.
“If people go back to that, we hope to see those numbers drop again,” said Stenehjem.
With so many positive cases, the doctor said that more people need to get tested so they can better understand what is happening with the virus.
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Jed Boal