1,539 COVID-19 cases, 8 additional deaths reported in Utah

Salt Lake City, Utah — According to the Utah Department of Health on Wednesday eight more Utahns have died due to COVID-19 and 1,539 residents have tested positive for the virus.

Of those cases, 362 (23.52%) were school-aged children — 138 cases in children ages 5-10, 99 cases in children ages 11-13 and 125 cases in children ages 14-18.

Currently, 483 Utahns are hospitalized due to the virus and the ICUs at Utah’s 16 referral center hospitals, where the majority of COVID-19 patients are treated, were 88.2% full — above the state’s “functionally full” threshold of 85%.

The rolling seven-day average for positive tests was 1,362 — down from 1,382 on Tuesday and 1,263 last Monday.

An additional 15,438 vaccine doses were administered between Friday and Tuesday, bringing the state’s total to 3,296,467.

UDOH said vaccine data would not be updated Wednesday due to a data quality analysis.

UDOH said over 1.59 million Utahns are now fully vaccinated and over 1.83 million have received at least one dose of a vaccine.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has also fully approved Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.

“The vaccine has been proven to be safe and highly effective since it first became available under emergency use last December. Full FDA approval is the final step in a rigorous approval process to confirm the vaccine’s safety and effectiveness,” UDOH officials said. “The FDA’s announcement should provide confidence to anyone who may have hesitated to get the vaccine while it was under emergency use. We strongly encourage you to get vaccinated and help end the pandemic. We also strongly encourage healthcare providers who haven’t offered COVID-19 vaccines at their practice before now, to take the necessary steps to enroll as vaccine providers as soon as possible.”