‘If you’re unvaccinated, you should be worried this Fourth of July,’ Cox says as doctors warn of crowded Utah hospitals

Emergency rooms and intensive care units in Utah could fill over the Fourth of July weekend, state officials and health experts warn — because of a surge in COVID-19 cases and the usual holiday-related accidents.

“If you’re unvaccinated, you should be worried this Fourth of July,” Gov. Spencer Cox said. “The good news is, you can still get vaccinated before the Fourth of July.”

Cox reiterated that around 95% of the new cases of COVID-19, as well as hospitalizations and deaths, are people who have not received the vaccine.

“The COVID-19 pandemic is not over,” warned Dr. Kencee Graves, associate chief medical officer for inpatient services at University of Utah Health.

Hospitalizations and case counts have surged in recent weeks, Graves and Dr. Michelle Hofmann, deputy director of the Utah Department of Health, said Thursday at the state’s COVID-19 media briefing in the Utah Capitol.

The rolling 7-day average for COVID-19 cases in Utah, as of Thursday, was at 384 per day, Hofmann said. That’s compared to an average of 324 per day a week ago, and 213 a day a month ago, she said.

Also, Graves said, “our hospitals are full of people who delayed care for 18 months” during the pandemic — including transplant recipients who are at risk of COVID-19 because their immune systems are delicate.

Back during the height of the pandemic, Graves said, “we had staff then to open additional ICUs. We don’t have those staff now.”

The Fourth of July holiday is also, Hofmann said, a time when more people go to the emergency room for accidents — from ATV crashes to fireworks burns.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

from The Salt Lake Tribune https://ift.tt/3xhIxru