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SALT LAKE CITY — Utah's latest weekly COVID-19 numbers update shows a continued decrease in cases, hospitalizations and recent deaths.
The Utah Department of Health reports 740 new COVID-19 cases over the past seven days, as well as six more confirmed deaths.
On Thursday, 63 people in Utah hospitals had the coronavirus — the lowest count since May 2021. Overall, the state's total hospitalization tally since the beginning of the pandemic increased by just 20 people.
The percentage of people visiting the emergency room with COVID-19 fell over the previous week from 0.57% to 0.51%.
Like last week's report, 18.8% of wastewater testing sites saw increased levels of the coronavirus.
Health care workers administered 2,470 vaccine doses since last week's report, bringing total doses given to 2,259,765. Now 66.7% of residents ages 5 and older are considered fully vaccinated, and 34.3% of those 12 and older have received booster shots.
The state is no longer releasing information about each newly confirmed death, such as their gender, county of residence and age range.
But the Public Health Indicator Based Information System shows that very few people who tested positive for the disease recently are dying compared to the winter surge. The database lists how many deaths tested positive for COVID-19 on a certain day, unless that number is fewer than five. The site only includes confirmed deaths and not those considered "probable."
Since Feb. 10, between zero and four people each day have tested positive for COVID-19 and then died; with the one exception being on Feb. 23, when five people tested positive and ultimately died, according to the database. By comparison, through the final few months of last year and January of this year, most days brought a high count of cases that resulted in deaths, averaging in the teens.
Now 929,361 cases and 4,736 deaths have been confirmed since the start of the pandemic. The death rate of confirmed cases stands at 0.5%.
Last week's COVID numbers:
