COVID-19: Southwest Utah counts 119 new cases, two new deaths

From staff reports

The Spectrum & Daily News

FILE - In this Friday, Oct. 23, 2020, file photo, Salt Lake County Health Department public health nurse Lee Cherie Booth performs a coronavirus test outside the Salt Lake County Health Department in Salt Lake City. About half of U.S. states have seen their highest daily infection numbers so far at some point in October, and the country came very close to back-to-back record daily infection rates last week. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File)

Southwest Utah added another 119 confirmed cases of COVID-19 on Monday and two more peoples' deaths were attributed to the disease.

A Washington County woman described as being between age 45 and 64 was and a Garfield County man described as being between 65 and 84 were the two newest deaths added to the local health district's numbers. There have now been 53 deaths of local residents, according to state health department records.

More:Southwest Utah sets new one-day record for cases of COVID-19 as state counts 100,000th

Case counts across the state have increased to an average of 1,494 per day over the past seven days, by far the highest number for any seven-day period since the pandemic began, with 17 percent of tests coming back positive over that same period.

In Southwest Utah, which covers five local counties — Washington, Iron, Kane, Beaver and Garfield — the average daily cases have tripled over the past month. As of Monday, there were 32 people hospitalized with the disease and there were 1,113 active cases. There had been 5,971 total cases since the pandemic began.

Monday's count marked only the second time that the local health district had added more than 100 cases to the count in one day — the other was on Saturday, when there were 134.

Southwest Utah coronavirus case counts by week

Sept. 13-19: 160
Sept. 20-26: 201
Sept. 27-Oct. 3: 285
Oct. 4-10: 345
Oct. 11-17: 430
Oct. 18-24: 540

Utah COVID-19 case counts

Statewide, Utah had reported 106,083 total positive cases through Sunday, an increase of 1,201 over the previous day.

The state had counted 574 total deaths.

There were 299 people actively hospitalized with the disease, and two hospitals in the state, the University of Utah Medical Center in Salt Lake City and Dixie Regional Medical Center in St. George, reported that all of their intensive care unit beds were full. There had been 5,102 people hospitalized with the disease since the pandemic began, including about 300 new hospitalizations in the past week.

There were 8,702 new tests added to the count on Sunday. The seven-day rolling average of positive tests was 1,490 cases per day, with 16.6 percent of all tests coming back positive.