The governor of the US state of Utah has declared 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", Governor Gary 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.