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SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Department of Health on Thursday reported 1,694 new COVID-19 cases and seven additional deaths over the past seven days.
That marks a rise to an average of 242 new cases confirmed each day. Three weeks ago, the state saw an average of 100 cases per day.
Grand County, Park City and the northern Utah County/southern Salt Lake County region are seeing high rates of the disease, while most of the state remains at low transmission levels.
More wastewater testing sites are also seeing higher rates of the virus, with an increase from 25% of sites the previous Thursday, April 21, to 59.4%.
The percentage of people visiting the emergency room with COVID-19 increased from 0.68% at last report to 0.89% of patients as of Thursday, officials noted.
On Thursday, 64 patients were hospitalized with the coronavirus across Utah.
The health department confirmed an additional 59 people in hospitals tested positive for the disease over the past seven days, which is consistent with the previous week, when 51 new patients had coronavirus.
Health care workers across the state administered 2,360 vaccine doses. Now 66.9% of residents ages 5 and older are considered fully vaccinated, and 34.7% of residents ages 12 and older have received a booster shot.
The health department has not yet attributed the current rise to a specific variant, but most of the cases earlier in April were identified as the omicron variant.
Only one K-12 school in Utah now has more than five cases of the disease — Brighton High School in the Canyons District has eight confirmed cases. Since the pandemic began, the state has confirmed 131 cases of multisystem inflammatory syndrome, a complication caused by the virus, in children. The highest number of cases (48) has affected those ages 5-9, followed by those ages 0-4, with 39 cases.
To date, Utah has confirmed 932,253 COVID-19 cases and 4,747 deaths due to the disease.
