SALT LAKE CITY — As another federal aid package remains in negotiation in Congress, two community advocacy groups took petitions to the offices of Utah Sens. Mitt Romney and Mike Lee on Monday calling for them to vote to extend pandemic relief and include undocumented immigrants in relief funds.
“We’ve received a lot of phone calls from families that have a family member that is hospitalized or they’ve lost a loved one. And so for us, it’s very important to continue to uplift those stories and to tell our senators that we need them more than ever,” said Mayra Sedano, executive director of Comunidades Unidas.
They were told that no one was in the offices to receive the petitions.
Meanwhile, on Monday, Utah saw its lowest number of new daily COVID-19 cases since June, but the state also reported nine new deaths due to the disease.
The Latino and Hispanic community has been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19, Sedano noted. As of Monday, that community makes up 37.7% of Utah’s cases but just 14.2% of its population. Latinos and Hispanics also account for 22.9% of the state’s coronavirus-related deaths.
Comunidades Unidas and Voices for Utah Children are urging Romney and Lee to vote in support of a second round of $1,200 payments for adults and $500 for children, as well as to maintain the $600 weekly enhanced unemployment assistance put in place early in the pandemic.
“As many people know, a lot of immigrant families have been left out of a stimulus check, either because they are undocumented or because they are part of a mixed-status family. And that is very unfair because obviously immigrants are contributors, and it’s very important for us to be included in that bill,” Sedano said.
Many immigrants continue to work on the front lines and put themselves at risk, she said.
“I think that now that there are a lot of conversations regarding the next package of COVID-19, I think that our senators have the opportunity to show that they are with the immigrant community of Utah,” according to Sedano.
Moe Hickey, CEO of Voices for Utah Children, said the groups have gathered thousands of signatures from Utah families.
“I think this is something that not just immigrants want, but the larger community sees the need of this,” Sedano said.
A report released by Voices for Utah Children last week showed that 59,000 undocumented families pay taxes and unemployment insurance through their individual tax identification number, “and so they’re contributing into the pot, and we believe they should be able to receive some benefit,” Hickey said.
“And right now there are a lot of children that are in need, especially going back to school, for extra resources — just stabilization,” he said.
“Senator Romney shares the frustration and concern of Utahns who are facing serious financial hardships because of the pandemic. He has introduced several measures to help prevent unemployed workers from experiencing a lapse in their unemployment insurance benefits and extend these benefits through the end of the year,” Romney spokeswoman Arielle Mueller said in a statement Tuesday. “He will continue to push for an extension of unemployment insurance as negotiations continue on COVID relief.”
Monday case counts
The Utah Department of Health confirmed 263 cases of the novel coronavirus out of 3,947 people tested, a 6.7% positive rate. They bring the state’s total cases since the pandemic began to 44,390 of 574,560 people tested, a 7.7% positive rate.
The last day the state’s new daily cases fell below 300 occurred on June 8.
The rolling seven-day average for new cases is 400 per day, and the average for positive lab tests is 8.9%. Currently, 193 people in Utah are hospitalized with COVID-19, three fewer than on Sunday. The state’s intensive care units — which have about 600 beds overall — are 60% full with coronavirus patients and others, while other hospital beds are 47% full.
The nine deaths reported Monday bring the state’s toll to 345. They were:
- A Grand County man, older than 85, who was hospitalized when he died.
- A Salt Lake County man, age 65-84, who was a long-term care resident.
- A Salt Lake County man, 65-84, who was hospitalized when he died.
- A Salt Lake County woman, older than 85, who was not hospitalized when she died.
- A Salt Lake County man, 65-84, who was hospitalized when he died.
- A Salt Lake County woman, older than 85, who was a long-term care resident.
- A Salt Lake County man, 25-44, who was hospitalized when he died.
- A Salt Lake County woman, 45-64, who was hospitalized when she died
- A Washington County woman, older than 85, who was a long-term care resident.
More than 34,000 of the state’s are considered recovered after surviving the three-week point since their diagnoses.
Bear River duplicate June cases
The Bear River Health Department on Monday shared an update into an investigation of duplicate cases that made their way into the county’s June case counts.
A recent message on the health department’s coronavirus webpage read in part: “During the investigation we discovered multiple individuals were tested multiple times and used different name spellings, and/or different addresses when they filled out their paperwork. During case investigations our epidemiological team recognized these discrepancies and have spent the last few weeks trying to update the system.”
“What we’ve had on the webpage, we have found that our numbers weren’t completely matching the state’s numbers, and so our epidemiological team just went in and evaluated our cases ... and they did find that there were multiple positive cases that were the same person,” said Joshua Greer, department spokesman.
But Greer said investigators found those people weren’t intentionally trying to drive case numbers up. Instead, between 80-90 people, many of whom were part of the Hispanic and Latino community, went into testing centers to receive additional tests due to the slow turnaround of their results while the area was experiencing a surge after an outbreak at a meatpacking plant. When they used different variations of their names, or when their names were misspelled when entered into the health department database, they got counted as two cases.
The cases have since been corrected in the county’s tracking system.
While such mistakes can happen statewide, the tracking system used by the Utah Department of Health is able to detect duplicates and remove them from the case counts, meaning the statewide numbers likely don’t include many duplicates, said spokeswoman Charla Haley.
The latest breakdown of Utah cases, hospitalizations and deaths by health district:
- Salt Lake County, 20,748; 1,349 hospitalized; 196 deaths.
- Utah County, 8,794; 412 hospitalized; 37 deaths.
- Davis County, 3,232; 180 hospitalized; 21 deaths.
- Southwest Utah, 3,223; 179 hospitalized; 26 deaths.
- Weber-Morgan, 2,845; 184 hospitalized; 25 deaths.
- Bear River (Box Elder, Cache, Rich), 2,316; 107 hospitalized; 7 deaths.
- Summit County, 713; 53 hospitalized; 1 death.
- San Juan County, 650; 83 hospitalized; 25 deaths.
- Tooele County, 583; 30 hospitalized; 0 deaths.
- Wasatch County, 568; 21 hospitalized; 4 deaths.
- Central Utah, 426; 25 hospitalized; 2 deaths.
- TriCounty (Uinta Basin), 179; 12 hospitalized; 0 deaths.
- Southeast Utah, 113; 7 hospitalized; 1 deaths.