SALT LAKE CITY — Utah’s daily COVID-19 case numbers, hospitalizations and deaths dropped slightly in Saturday’s report from the Utah Department of Health.
There are 467 newly confirmed COVID-19 cases, bringing the state’s total number of known infections since the pandemic began to 381,254, which is about 11% of the population. Health officials, however, believe that not all people with symptoms were tested and not all infected people experienced symptoms.
More than 1.13 million doses of vaccine have been administered to people across the state, including 25,861 doses since Friday, the health department reports. Those include 753,804 people who have received one dose, and 413,058 — or about 12% of the state’s population — who are fully vaccinated.
The state has received 1.3 million doses from vaccine manufacturers, a number that is allocated by the federal government.
COVID-19 vaccines are currently available to Utahns age 50 and older, as well as people with an expanded list of medical conditions. Health care workers, first responders, long-term care facility residents and staffs, and K-12 teachers and school staffs are also still eligible to get the vaccine.
Earlier this week, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox announced that all Utahns age 16 and older will be eligible to be vaccinated starting Wednesday, March 24, though it may take some time to secure an appointment at the various locations offering the vaccines.
A list of vaccination locations can be found online, at coronavirus.utah.gov/vaccine-distribution.
Of the more than 1 million COVID-19 vaccines that have been administered in Utah are 180,113 doses of the Moderna vaccine and 203,129 from Pfizer-BioNTech. The health department reports 29,816 Utahns have received the Janssen vaccine, manufactured by Johnson & Johnson, which requires just one dose.
Full efficacy of the various vaccines is not achieved until about two weeks after the final dose is administered.
The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report more than 118 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been distributed since Dec. 14, when the first shots were given.
Since COVID-19 vaccine distribution began in the United States on Dec. 14, more than 118 million doses have been administered, fully vaccinating over 41 million people or 12.6% of the total U.S. population.
The rolling seven-day average number of positive tests is 469 per day, down from 474 on Friday and 510 per day reported last Saturday. A total of 14,990 tests were administered Friday for 6,451 people. That puts the rolling seven-day average for percent positivity of tests at 4.1% when all tests are included and 8.1% when multiple tests by an individual over the past 90 days are excluded — both slightly lower than Friday’s reported statistics.
There are 160 people currently hospitalized throughout Utah with COVID-19, which is 16 fewer than was reported on Friday and 16 more than was reported one week ago, according to the health department.
Another two deaths were reported on Saturday, bringing the state’s COVID-19 death toll to 2,060 lives lost since April 2020. Those deaths include a Davis County man and a Weber County man, both between the ages of 65 and 84 and who were both hospitalized at the time of their deaths.