State health officials report 1,585 new cases on Sunday, plus eight deaths.
(Rick Bowmer | The Associated Press) James Lennox, IT technical support specialist for the Utah School for the Deaf and Blind, receives the COVID-19 vaccine at Davis County Legacy Center on Tuesday, January 12, 2021, in Farmington, Utah. Utah began vaccinating teachers and school staff across the state. They plan to have all teachers and school staff vaccinated by the end of February.
Among the hospitals in Utah that specialize in COVID-19 – places like the University of Utah Hospital in Salt Lake City and the Intermountain Medical Center in Murray – there are typically a total of 453 beds in intensive care units available to patients.
Now, the 453 ICU beds at these referral centers are full – and some more. On Sunday, the Utah Department of Health reported that 458 ICU beds were occupied in the state, which means that sites specializing in the treatment of coronavirus are at 101.3% capacity.
The percentage of all ICU beds across the state is also at critical levels, sitting at 97.4%, or 515 of the 529 available in Sunday’s data release.
On Saturday, Utah broke the record for the number of COVID-19 patients currently in the ICU with 231. That number dropped to 226 on Sunday. As a benchmark, the seven-day period ending on Sunday started on January 11 with 188 COVID -19 patients.
As of Sunday, the state had administered 157,170 global doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. That number includes 142,368 Utahns who received their first doses and 14,802 Utahns who received both doses.
The fact that the state reported 1,585 cases on Sunday can be interpreted as good news. In the past seven days, there have been 17,838 positive cases reported. Sunday’s 1,585 cases are the second lowest number reported during those seven days, which included 5,188 on Wednesday, and two other days that eclipsed 2,500.
In addition, 1,585 is the second smallest positive case since the end of December.
The eight deaths reported on Sunday are part of the 101 recorded in the past seven days. The death toll in Utah has been 1,493 since the pandemic began. Just as the number of cases is low, eight deaths reported in one day can be considered progress after the week recorded a maximum of 27 deaths on Wednesday.
Utah’s seven-day continuous average for positive tests is 2,209 per day, which raises the seven-day average for the percentage of positive laboratory tests to 22.6%. That last number places Utah in the top five out of all 50 states on Sunday.
The 7,199 tests reported on Sunday bring the total administered to 1,902,260.