State Reports Five COVID-19 Deaths & 632 New Cases
Jul 11, 2020, 1:11 PM | Updated: 1:49 pm
FILE (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – Officials with the Utah Department of Health reported five new deaths and 632 new COVID-19 cases on Saturday, with 203 people currently hospitalized because of the virus.
Over 400,000 people have been tested for the virus, with officials reporting 9,378 more people have been tested as of Saturday.
The seven-day rolling average for new cases was 614, with 9.9% of tests returning positive.
State health officials consider 16,897 cases to be recovered, which means a person was diagnosed with COVID-19 at least three weeks ago and has not died.
Overall, 212 people have died from the virus. Saturday’s deaths were reported as:
- Male, between 65-84, Salt Lake County resident, hospitalized at time of death
- Female, between 25-44, Washington County resident, not hospitalized at time of death
- Male, between 45-64, Salt Lake County resident, hospitalized at time of death
- Male, between 45-64, Salt Lake County resident, long-term care facility resident
- Male, between 65-84, Salt Lake County resident, long-term care facility resident
Since the beginning of the pandemic, 1,797 people have been hospitalized.
Eighty-four people were in the ICU for COVID-19 treatment on Saturday, which was five more than UDOH reported Friday. Seventy-one percent of Utah’s ICU beds were occupied between non-COVID-19 and COVID-19 patients.
The total number of reported hospitalizations rose from 182 to 203.
On Friday, leaders from Utah’s major health care systems called for mandatory face masks after a record 867 new coronavirus cases were reported.
They said while Utah may not be at risk of running out of beds, hospitals will face shortages in trained medical personnel if cases and hospitalizations continue to rise at current levels.
“Beds don’t treat people. People treat people,” said Dr. Mark Briesacher, chief physician executive at Intermountain Healthcare.
Epidemiologists at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have also expressed concern against voices erroneously suggesting that herd immunity may soon slow the spread of the coronavirus.
“As infectious disease epidemiologists, we wish to state clearly that herd immunity against COVID-19 will not be achieved at a population level in 2020, barring a public health catastrophe,” said David Dowdy and Gypsyamber D’Souza. “To reach herd immunity for COVID-19, likely 70 percent or more of the population would need to be immune. Without a vaccine, over 200 million Americans would have to get infected before we reach this threshold. Put another way, even if the current pace of the COVID-19 pandemic continues in the United States – with over 25,000 confirmed cases a day – it will be well into 2021 before we reach herd immunity. If current daily death rates continue, over half a million Americans would be dead from COVID-19 by that time.”
