Utah is now facing its most dire episode yet in this epidemic. Our infections are at an all-time high. Although Utah has one of the lowest mortality rates in the country, the dramatic increase in infection puts the integrity of our health care system at risk.
Over the past four weeks, we have seen our infection rates and case counts skyrocket to the highest they have ever been. Our case counts have hovered around 1,000 per day. Our percent positivity is now over 13%.
Worst of all, our hospitals are getting overwhelmed, and our healthcare workers are getting stretched too thin to provide the best possible care.
We are utilizing 15.8% of our ICU beds to treat COVID-19 patients, more than double what we were before, and our total ICU utilization is at 69.6%. This leaves our hospitals precariously close to being unable to treat COVID and non-COVID patients in need of critical care.
You and your families deserve good health, more normalcy, and certainty. As a state government, we owe it to you to make critical decisions about the COVID-19 pandemic based on critical health data — not based on fear, and certainly not based on politics.
Today I am announcing that we are retiring the colored guidance system, which has served us well up to this point, and replacing it with a new system that will incorporate more refined epidemiological input.
This system will provide trusted guidance based on the calculated amount of infection and transmission that happens in our respective communities, and provides Utahns with concrete actions to help stem that spread.
Every week, the Utah Department of Health will analyze three key data points for each county. Based on that data, each county will be automatically categorized as a High, Moderate, or Low Transmission Area.
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