SALT LAKE CITY — It’s been more than 100 days now since COVID-19 was first reported in Utah. Since then, we’ve all become accustomed to terms like social distancing and also the state’s color-coded reopening dial.

But there is still information and knowledge we’re learning over time. Recent studies and data points released by local, state and federal officials, as well as researchers, are helping us close some of those information gaps.

Here are a few newer data points or studies that help paint a clearer picture of how COVID-19 spreads and how it affects people.

More precise Utah hospitalization data

The Utah Department of Health began providing better hospitalization statistics recently, which helps us better track how many people are currently hospitalized, how many of those are in intensive care units and how many ventilators are being used. These have been listed as important factors in determining if Utah needs to go back to stricter guidelines.

As of Friday, the state health department has reported 16,425 cases of COVID-19 dating back to March 6. As KSL.com has reported many times, an uptick of cases began shortly after Memorial Day. There have been at least 200 new cases reported daily since May 28, and the state has nearly doubled its total cases after there were 8,521 cases reported on the holiday, May 25.

A new hospitalization typically lags about a week after a new case, according to state epidemiologist Dr. Angela Dunn. Hospitalizations have also increased to its highest rates over the past few weeks. State health officials have reported 453 hospitalizations since the holiday; that’s about 40% of all hospitalizations since officials began tracking cases.

So what does that mean for current hospitalizations? On a daily level, they’ve also gone up since the beginning of the month. On June 2, there were 108 Utahns hospitalized due to COVID-19. The state health department reports there were 149 people hospitalized as of Friday. That’s a 46% increase in daily hospitalizations in about 2 1/2 weeks. There are another 88 people hospitalized with COVID-19 cases under investigation.

The number of ICU cases has remained a bit more stable. There were 53 ICU cases on June 2. That number reached 72 by the end of last week but has slid back a bit to 63, as of Friday, which is a 19% increase over the same timespan.

The state health department also reports that 60.5% of all ICU beds in the state are occupied at the moment. That’s counting for both COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 reasons. Since the department has previously pointed out having about 600 ICU beds, it means the majority of the current ICU hospitalizations aren’t COVID-19 related. In fact, if there were exactly 600 total beds, that would mean only 17% of all ICU hospitalizations right now are COVID-19 related.

The state also has plenty of ventilators available at this point. It notes that 187 of 1,297 total ventilators are being used, which is a little more than 14%. The new data set provides a better look at daily hospitalizations and how crowded ICUs are, which, in turn, can inform us if hospitals are being overrun because of the coronavirus.

Where are the new cases happening at the fastest rates?

A few weeks ago, the state health department began releasing a more detailed heat map that shows most towns and cities instead of a breakdown by health department. They’ve also released a version of the map detailing case rates over the past two weeks.

This is helpful because a new case that doesn’t end in a fatality after three weeks is counted as recovered. So even though there have been 16,425 cases in Utah, 7,157 cases are considered active and 9,113 are considered as recovered. That means maps showing cases from the beginning of the pandemic can be misleading if you want to know where the disease is currently spreading.

Dunn wasn’t kidding when she said the recent rise was a "statewide trend" earlier this month. The two-week map marks places in all corners of the state as having high case rates. From north to south, general areas considered to have high rates are Cache and Rich counties, Tremonton, northern Weber County, southern Davis County, western Salt Lake County, southern Utah County, Wasatch County, Richfield/Monroe/Salina, Cedar City, southern Washington County and San Juan County.

Are there Utah counties still without COVID-19 cases?

Even after releasing a more detailed breakdown of COVID-19 in the state, the state hasn’t provided a county-by-county report where COVID-19 cases have been reported. Some parts of the detailed heat map merge together communities and counties.

With the help of USAfacts.org, the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention released a county-by-county count of cases starting in late April. It was last updated Wednesday but it’s useful now that Utah has started moving counties to "new normal green" on a county-by-county basis. So what does this data tell us about counties?

For starters, it reported Wednesday that Daggett and Wayne counties hadn’t reported any cases. It also stated Beaver, Kane, Morgan, Carbon, Grand, Juab, Rich, Garfield, Millard, Duchesne, Piute and Emery counties all had less than 20 cases apiece.

Beaver, Daggett, Duchesne, Emery, Garfield, Kane Millard, Piute, Uintah and Wayne counties are all now listed as new normal green counties.

Study links population size to COVID-19 infection rate, not population density

Researchers at the University of Utah and Johns Hopkins University say population size has been a bigger factor for COVID-19 than population density. Their findings were published in the Journal of the American Planning Association Thursday.

The conclusion was made after analyzing infection and mortality rates in 913 of counties in the U.S. from Jan. 20 through May 25. In fact, the researcher said after taking into account metro size, education, race and age, doubling density resulted in an 11.3% lower death rate.

"Our analysis shows that metropolitan size is more important than density. Take Dutchess County, New York, for example, being surrounded by one of the largest metropolitan areas — New York, Newark and New Jersey City. The activity density is 518.1 and death rate of 4.63 per 10,000. Salt Lake County, by comparison, is located in a metropolitan area that is one-twentieth the population and has a density four times higher at 2060.2 and a death rate of only 0.61," said Sadegh Sabouri, a doctoral student in the Department of City & Metropolitan Planning at the University of Utah, and a co-author of the study, in a prepared statement.

Preliminary Salt Lake County data about case counts tipped off that this might be the case. As KSL.com reported on April 15, the early county data showed very little correlation between population density and case counts at the time. Two months later, the Salt Lake County ZIP codes with the highest population density have moved up the charts in terms of case counts per capita but not enough to show correlation.

The top three ZIP codes in terms of population density (84118, 84070 and 84047) are fifth, 14th and eighth in terms of cases per capita, according to the Salt Lake County Health Department. The ZIP codes with the highest case counts in the county are all in the area of western Salt Lake City, West Valley City and Magna — an area with the highest total populations in the county.

What could this mean in the future?

"These findings suggest that urban planners should continue to practice and advocate for compact places rather than sprawling ones, due to the myriad well-established benefits of the former, including health benefits," said Dr. Shima Hamidi, the study's lead author and assistant professor of American Health in Environmental Challenges in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, in a statement.

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