SALT LAKE CITY, Nov 9 — The governor of the US state of Utah, Gary Herbert, declared late yesterday a new state of emergency to address hospital overcrowding in response to weeks of stress on its hospital networks due to a surge of novel coronavirus cases.
“Due to the alarming rate of Covid infections within our state, tonight I issued a new state of emergency with several critical changes to our response,” Herbert said on Twitter.
“These changes are not shutting down our economy, but are absolutely necessary to save lives and hospital capacity,” he said.
The governor said the entire state was being placed under a mask mandate until further notice and casual social gatherings were being limited to household-only for the next two weeks.
All extracurricular activities were being put on hold, he said.
The total number of coronavirus infections in the United States rose past 10 million late yesterday, according to a Reuters tally.
Utah has had 132,621 total confirmed cases and 659 deaths from Covid-19 since the pandemic began. — Reuters
