SALT LAKE CITY – Gov. Spencer Cox was optimistic and excited about Utah’s prospects for ending the pandemic at Thursday’s weekly COVID-19 press conference. But the newly elected state leader claimed that while the future is bright, things could have gone better had the state introduced a mask mandate earlier.
“Sometimes we’ve done it right and sometimes we’ve got it wrong,” he said. “We’ve made other mistakes before by not making masks, by not making them mandatory, which could have helped and maybe saved lives.”
Former Gov. Gary Herbert persisted for months on implementing a statewide mask order in the pandemic and only relented after a massive hike in the case ahead of Thanksgiving in November. At the time, Cox had just won the governor’s election and was still in his role as lieutenant governor and also as head of the state’s coronavirus task force.
“In retrospect, we should have and probably could have imposed it,” Cox said on Thursday.
Although the state did not have an official mask mandate until late fall, Herbert, Cox, and other officials recommended the use of a face covering and produced 2 million masks for distribution to those who needed one.
“Many of us have been right about the problems in this pandemic and many of us have been wrong at various times,” Cox said Thursday, highlighting the tradeoff government officials face when new information comes to light.
As of March 2020, face-covering clothing was not yet a political issue, and health officials and agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, asked residents not to wear them.
CDC guidelines at the time recommended wearing face covers, because medical supplies should be kept for frontline hospital personnel and that the cover would do little to prevent spread. But by April 2020, as asymptomatic spread became better understood, the CDC had updated its guidelines to advise every resident in the US to wear a face cover.
“We’ve learned a lot about masks,” Cox said. “We learned more about how effective masks were.”
Since the early pandemic response, several studies have shown data to support that mask wearing is an effective way to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, which is spread through respiratory droplets.
Likewise, several models developed by experts and scientists predicted that COVID-19 cases in the country would peak significantly in March before seeing a decrease in the number of cases. In Utah, the number of cases and positivity rate have started to decline in recent weeks as the number of vaccines continues to rise.
“It doesn’t mean they’re bad people, it doesn’t mean they’re bad scientists, it doesn’t mean they don’t know what they’re doing; it just means things have changed,” Cox said.
To date, a total of 660,444 vaccine doses have been administered to Utahns, nearly doubling the total number of COVID-19 cases since the start of the pandemic to 369,433. According to the Utah Department of Health, a total of 1,890 Utahns have died of COVID-19 and 14,597 have been hospitalized.
The Pfizer and Moderna two-dose COVID-19 vaccines are currently available for eligible Utahns in the state, and the availability of the single-dose Johnson and Johnson vaccine is expected in the coming days.
All in all, Cox was extremely optimistic about the state’s future with the pandemic, saying by the summer that he hopes to be maskless in a July 4th parade. He predicted that enough vaccine doses will be available for every adult in Utah who wants to get one in late April or early May.
As long as there is a low transmission rate after vaccination of the majority, Cox believes masks will not be needed sooner than expected. That prediction could change, and if it does, the governor said the state would adjust its response.
Despite previous mistakes made by leaders, Cox stressed the importance of light at the end of the tunnel. Officials don’t always have the perfect response and in hindsight is 2020, he added.
“Sometimes we don’t get it just right, and (masks) was probably one where we could have done it a little earlier,” Cox said.