SALT LAKE CITY – Utah’s latest public health order has extended its statewide mandate to wear masks to stop the spread of the coronavirus, providing a better understanding of one of the hottest questions being asked during the COVID for months -19 Pandemic: When Can We Take The Masks Off?
While no specific date was set in writing, the Utah Department of Health issued a key benchmark on Tuesday that would begin the process to lift mask mandates.
We now know that counties with “low” transmission rates will no longer be statewide eight weeks after the state receives just over 1.63 million first – aka “prime” – assigned doses of the COVID-19 vaccine .
A main dose is currently either the first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine, but will also include the one-time Johnson & Johnson vaccine nearing final Food and Drug Administration approval.
Why 1.63 million?
The exact number with which the process to override the mask mandate begins is not arbitrary at all. The number represents 70% of Utah’s adult population, said Tom Hudachko, a spokesman for the Utah Department of Health.
As noted by the Cleveland Clinic, about 50% to 80% of the population is expected to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity. The New York Times reported that some public health experts place the range between 70% and 90%. Seventy percent was also a figure estimated at the beginning of the pandemic.
There are also early signs that all 1.63 million primary vaccine doses would be administered once the assigned number is reached. A majority of the two age groups in the state health service data who have had access to the COVID-19 vaccine for more than a month have now received at least one dose. The data shows that 71% of Utahns ages 70 to 79 and 69% of Utahns ages 80 or older have received a primary vaccine.
When will we reach 1.63 million?
There are still many vaccines to be assigned to Utah to reach 1,633,000.
The health department reported Tuesday that the state has been assigned 444,905 first doses, with more than 410,000 Utahns receiving at least the first dose of the vaccine.
That means more than 90% of the assigned first-dose vaccines so far have already made it to the arms of Utah (again, which shows the popularity of the vaccine so far), but it also means that the department, according to its own figures, Tuesday was about 27. % to what it would take to get to 1.63 million.
The good news is that more vaccines have been delivered in recent weeks than in the first few weeks after they became available. The bad news is that the number of vaccines assigned to states has been variable since its inception and still is, making it difficult to give an exact answer as to when Utah will reach a certain number.
This fluidity formed the basis of a New York Times data model that looked at the vaccination process of the nation as a whole. It found that at the current rate of 1.7 million shots a day, the US would achieve vaccine immunity in November, but would achieve total immunity by June – the number of people vaccinated plus the number of people who became immune after recovery from the disease.
If accelerated to 3 million shots per day as a result of an “increase in supply,” total immunity could be achieved as early as May with 70% vaccine immunity in July.
Still, there are some rough estimates when Utah could reach 1.63 million.
On Feb. 4, Governor Spencer Cox said projections from the Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson vaccines pointed to about 130,000 primary doses assigned to Utah in early March. If that total started in the week of February 28 – March 6 and nothing changed, it would take about nine weeks to surpass 1.63 million. The ninth week in that scenario is the week of April 25 – May 1.
Cox added that the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is expected to be approved by the FDA in the coming weeks, could result in tens of thousands more prime vaccines every week from April. The addition of a fourth vaccine would also speed up the process and could move that date sooner based on what was said a few weeks ago.
But again, the numbers have been volatile and the expected dose totals have shifted since then. Officially, the Utah Department of Health still estimates that 1.63 million allocated prime doses will be reached “later this spring.” That’s when a master dose is expected to be assigned to about 70% of all Utahns currently eligible for the vaccine.
In an email, Hudachko told KSL.com on Wednesday that new figures presented by Congress this week indicate that it “seems certainly possible” that the state would have allocated 1.63 million prime doses in the first week of May. can reach.
Should that be the case, that bodes well for the state’s efforts to ensure that every adult in Utah who wants a vaccine has access to a vaccine by late spring. It also gives ample time for the allocated doses to land in Utah’s arms in the weeks after the 1.63 million allocation limit is reached.
When do the masks go off?
Okay, back to the new health order provision that went into effect Tuesday.
If Utah had those 1.63 million doses on Tuesday when that benchmark was announced, low-speed counties could reverse the mandate as early as April 20.
If the state reaches 1.63 million prime doses allocated in early May, some Utah counties may have been exempt from the mask mandate in late June. If the health department started the clock on May 3, the mandate for some areas would end on June 28.
This could explain Cox’s comment Tuesday, in which he tweeted: “I truly believe that by the 4th (if not before) we will be celebrating maskless in large groups.”
There is a second component to the question “when can the masks come off?” and that revolves around case trends, based on the current health order. If the order took effect immediately, only five counties in Utah would be affected. That’s because Daggett, Garfield, Piute, Rich and Wayne counties are currently the only counties in the state in the “low transmission level” category.
A province must meet at least two of these criteria to achieve “low” transmission:
- A positivity rate of less than 5% nationwide
- A 14-day case of less than 101 per 100,000 people
- Seven-day mean statewide ICU occupancy rate is less than 69% and seven-day mean COVID-19 ICU statewide occupancy rate is less than 6%
That’s where the delivery of the assigned vaccines still comes into play. At the same time, COVID-19 trends are starting to tilt in the right direction. The statewide moving average for new COVID-19 cases has dropped 56% over the past four weeks – from Jan. 25 to Monday – based on data obtained Tuesday. ICU usage of all hospitals in the state fell to 69% Tuesday; about 18% of those IC needs were linked to COVID-19.
To fuel those downward trends in the coming weeks, health experts and the health order are recommending that Utahns wear their masks in all public areas indoors and out, physically distance themselves from other households, and wash their hands thoroughly.
The masks should only be removed when the correct number of vaccines needed have been assigned and COVID-19 case trends remain low.