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With 3,395 new coronavirus cases reported Saturday, Utah’s rate of new diagnoses dropped slightly, but hospitalizations reached new records.
The Utah Department of Health on Saturday reported a seven-day average of 3,229 new positive test results per day — below Friday’s record-high rate of 3,331, but far above the 2,200 new daily cases the state was averaging two weeks ago.
Utah’s death toll from the coronavirus stood at 787 on Saturday, with 14 fatalities reported since Friday:
- Three Salt Lake County woman, ages 25 to 44, 65 to 84, and older than 85.
- Two Weber County men, one age 65 to 84 and one older than 85.
- Four Salt Lake County man, ages 65 to 84.
- A Utah County man, older than 85.
- A Wasatch County man, age 65 to 84.
- An Emery County man, age 65 to 84.
- A Washington County man, age 45 to 64.
- A Sevier County man, age 65 to 84.
A record 551 Utah patients were concurrently admitted to hospitals as of Saturday, UDOH reported.
In total, 7,458 patients have been hospitalized in Utah for COVID-19, 782 of them in the past week.
For the past week, 23.7% of all tests have come back positive — a rate that indicates a large number of infected people are not being tested, state officials have said.
The highest rates of new cases per capita were in Sevier, Garfield, Utah and Cache counties, where more than one in every 65 people has tested positive for the virus in the past two weeks — meaning their cases are considered “active.” And Wasatch, Salt Lake, Morgan and Washington counties each are reporting more than one in every 75 residents have tested positive in the past two weeks.
Among Utah’s 98 “small areas,” used by state officials to track health data, the highest case rates remain in the northern neighborhoods of Orem, where at least one in every 38 people has an active infection.
There were 16,270 new test results reported on Saturday, above the weeklong average of about 13,900 new tests per day.
This story will be updated.