Utah governor to relax coronavirus rules in much of state

SALT LAKE CITY – Utah will further relax coronavirus-related restrictions across much of the state, allowing team sports to resume, pools to open and groups of up to 50 people to gather, Gov. Gary Herbert said Thursday.

Stricter rules will remain in several areas, including Salt Lake City, West Valley City and areas around the tourist hot spots of Moab in southern Utah and ski-resort heavy Park City.

Advisories on practicing social distancing and using masks are expected to continue in spots moving from an “orange” moderate risk to a “yellow” low risk, Herbert said. The state has already allowed restaurants, salons and other businesses to reopen.

Salt Lake County health officials said they asked to keep stricter rules on the entire county for another 10 days rather than only two cities, but state officials refused.

Herbert, for his part, said that with testing on the increase and hospitals reporting plenty of patient capacity, it’s safe to further relax restrictions starting Saturday. Schools will remain closed.

“I like the trend, I like the numbers, it gives me hope,” the Republican governor said.

The coronavirus causes flu-like symptoms that most people recover from, but it can be fatal, especially those with other health conditions. There have been at least 6,700 cases in Utah, and 75 deaths officials said.

Twenty-four of those deaths have been recorded in May after Herbert first relaxed restrictions, including allowing in-person dining at restaurants and for gyms and bars to reopen.

The daily case count has increased in May to an average of 148 per day, up from 128 in April, but the positive rate of tests has remained fairly steady at about 4.2%, according to state figures.

Utah has the fifth-lowest rate of confirmed deaths per 100,000 people, the seventh-lowest rate of positive tests and the seventh-highest rate of people tested per 1,000, according to The COVID Tracking Project.

In other developments:

— State unemployment claims slowed again last week but remained at unprecedented levels as jobless residents received a combined $78.6 million in state and federal funds, new figures released Thursday showed.

The 7,135 people who claimed unemployment in the week ending May 9 represents a 21% decline from the previous week and far less than the pandemic peak of 33,000 claims March 29-April 4, state figures show.

The decrease came after Herbert allowed some businesses to reopen. The claims filed each of the past eight weeks were more than any single week on record, including during the height of the Great Recession in 2009 when the high was about 5,000 in one week, state figures showed.

Nearly 153,000 people have requested unemployment since March 15 as the pandemic forced businesses to close. The staggering figure easily surpassed yearly totals for each of the last five years when the state averaged about 73,000 claims a year, state figures show.

The state has paid out $120 million in claims, while the federal government has doled out $187 million in stimulus funds.