© Trent Nelson (Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) The Sinclair dinosaur wears a mask at a gas station in Riverton on Thursday, April 2, 2020.

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Utah's coronavirus outbreak could peak as early as Friday, according to a model created by University of Utah researchers, based on the spread of the virus in Italy.

"We are behind Italy three weeks," said biostatistician Fares Quedan, part of the team that prepared the U. model.

That puts Utah's projected peak at April 10, when an estimated 250 new cases could appear, according to the team's forecast.

The highest single-day increase so far was on April 4, when state health officials announced 182 new confirmed cases.

New confirmed cases are likely to remain high next week, according to the model, which puts a smaller subsequent peak at April 15, with about 230 cases.

The peak is earlier than in other models based on the beginning of Utah’s outbreak, which is defined as at least one new case on two consecutive days — which occurred in early March, or 23 days after the start of Italy’s outbreak in February.

“Now, of course you can take some containment measures — strong, weak, you can try to influence that,” Quedan said.

But containment measures in the U.S., like compulsory social distancing, have generally aligned with the timing of similar measures in Italy, he said.

“In Italy, they do have containment measures stronger than we do,” Quedan said. “Remember, Italy, since March 20, has a stay-home order. Utah doesn’t have, still, this stay-at-home order.”

A peak in new cases on Friday would not mean Utah is home free after that, Quedan warned. In an epidemic, the number of new cases tends to take longer to decline than it does to rise.

“Even though in Italy they have a plateau, it’s still fluctuating,” he said.

The Utah model is more optimistic than it was two weeks ago, when Italy's new cases still apparently had not peaked and U. statisticians anticipated 70,000 cases over the duration of the outbreak. But the risk of spread will remain long after the peak.

“By the end [of the U.'s model] it still has [50] new cases a day,” Quedan said.

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