Another 843 Utahners were diagnosed with COVID-19, and six other Utahners have died from it.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) The Mayor of Salt Lake City, Erin Mendenhall, who was seen here at an event in April 2021, issued an executive order on July 28, 2021 calling on all employees and visitors to the city to wear face masks in city-run facilities.
Editor’s note: The Salt Lake Tribune offers free access to critical stories about the coronavirus. Sign up for our Top Stories newsletter sent to your inbox every morning. To support journalism like this, please donate or become a subscriber.
People working or visiting Salt Lake City in Salt Lake City are encouraged to wear masks again as the summer surge in COVID-19 continues.
Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall signed an executive order on Wednesday requiring city workers – vaccinated or unvaccinated – and visitors to city facilities to wear face covers. Employees also have to mask themselves when driving in city-owned vehicles or “acting in the context of urban employment indoors”.
Mendenhall’s order came as the daily number of new COVID-19 cases in the state of Utah exceeded 800 for the second consecutive Wednesday.
The Utah Department of Health reported Wednesday that an additional 843 Utahners were diagnosed with COVID-19 and six other Utahners have died of the disease.
The number of doses of the COVID-19 vaccine administered passed the 3 million mark on Wednesday, UDOH reported.
Mendenhall cited new guidelines issued Tuesday by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which asked vaccinated people to wear masks again indoors.
“As a city, we have always reached out to the CDC and our health professionals to guide our actions against the spread of COVID-19, and today is no different,” Mendenhall said in a statement.
Also on Wednesday, Utah Supreme Court Justice Matthew B. Durrant issued an administrative order requiring all Utah court staff and visitors to the courthouse to wear masks from Friday.
Durrant’s order affects courts in counties listed as “moderate” and “high” on the UDOH virus transmission index – which include most of the state’s major population centers.
As of Wednesday, counties are in the “high” range: Box Elder, Iron, Juab, Sevier, Uintah, Utah, and Washington.
Counties in the “moderate” categories are: Cache, Carbon, Davis, Duchesne, Millard, Morgan, Salt Lake, San Juan, Sanpete, Summit, Tooele, Wasatch, and Weber.
Counties in the “low” transmission category, most of them in rural Utah, are: Beaver, Daggett, Emery, Garfield, Grand, Kane, Piute, Rich, and Wayne.
Vaccinations on the last day / total vaccinations • 6,578 / 3,001,472.
Cases reported on the previous day • 843.
Deaths Reported on Last Day • Six.
Two of them were women between 45 and 64, one from Salt Lake County and the other from Weber County.
The other four were between 65 and 84 years old: a woman from Kane County; a woman from Salt Lake County; and two men from Uintah County.
Hospital stays on the previous day • 350. That is 12 more than on Tuesday. Of the people currently hospitalized, 157 are in intensive care units – seven more than on Tuesday.
Tests Reported Last Day • 6,834 people were tested for the first time. A total of 11,602 people were tested.
Percentage of positive tests • According to the original government method, the rate is 12.3%. That’s less than the 7-day average of 14.4%.
The state’s new method counts all test results, including repeated tests of the same person. Tuesday’s rate was 7.3%, lower than the 7-day average of 10.2%
[Read more: Utah is changing how it measures the rate of positive COVID-19 tests. Here’s what that means.]
Total numbers so far • 430,143 cases; 2,447 deaths; 18,476 hospital stays; 5,290,078 tests.
This story evolves and is updated.
Comments are closed.