SALT LAKE CITY – While Utah Governor Spencer Cox announced Thursday that more earlier-than-expected vaccines are eligible, he remained confidently optimistic that there will be a return to normal in the summer.
Cox gestured to his mask and stated forcefully that the days are numbered.
“I’m telling you, I’m not going to wear this (mask) on July 4th. I’m going to be in a parade somewhere,” Cox said at a press conference Thursday morning. “If I’m wrong, I’ll come here and admit I’m wrong, and we’ll do something else.”
The state epidemiologist Dr. Angela Dunn of the Utah Department of Health remained more pragmatic. She said normalcy is “ certainly possible, ” by the summer, but it will take an effort from everyone in the state to continue wearing masks, stay socially distant, limit gatherings, and enforce any other public health measures that state officials have over the past. preached for years. .
At the press conference where Cox, always an avid optimist, became passionate about the current COVID-19 situation in Utah, the governor announced that residents of the state aged 16 and older with certain co-morbidities are now eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine, a few days earlier than expected. That population accounts for about 240,000 Utahns, the governor said.
Previously, the date Utahns with comorbidities were eligible was March 1, but Cox said these people are eligible with immediate effect. The full list of co-morbidities that make a person eligible for the vaccine is available at coronavirus.utah.gov/vaccine-distribution/#eligibility.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has only approved the Pfizer vaccine for people ages 16 and 17, Cox said. If people in that age group want to get the vaccine, they need to make an appointment at a vaccination center that supplies the Pfizer vaccine, the governor added. Not all vaccine clinics have the Pfizer vaccine, and a list of clinics that have it will be provided at coronavirus.utah.gov/vaccine.
Cox said he is focusing on getting weapons into arms as soon as possible, especially for those more vulnerable populations, rather than looking at the population of the state as a whole.
“We are committed to accelerating eligibility where possible,” said Cox.
The governor also announced on Thursday that people who want the vaccine will no longer have to wait to make an appointment in their home country. If you can find an appointment in another province, you can make an appointment there now. However, you must make your appointment for the second vaccination dose in the same county where you made your appointment for the first dose, Cox said.
Utah government Spencer Cox gave a COVID-19 pandemic update at a news conference on Thursday. The state epidemiologist Dr. Angela Dunn of the Utah Department of Health is also spoken to at the press conference. Watch the replay here.
Make up a vaccination ground
At one point during the COVID-19 fight in Utah, intensive care units were perhaps hours away from being completely overwhelmed, Cox said. State leaders were nearing a point where they had to set up a triage ICU at the Mountain America Expo Center in Sandy to treat the massive amount of patients suffering from the disease, he said.
But that did not happen. Now, instead of a triage ICU, the expo center is used to administer vaccines.
“We underline the positivity of what’s going on out there,” said Cox.
According to Cox, about 70% of people over 70 in Utah have been vaccinated. Some Utah counties have inoculated closer to 80% of that population into their areas, he added.
In addition, about 29% of 65-69 year olds now have at least one dose, Cox said. Last Thursday, that population became eligible, and those people’s vaccinations are expected to continue for several weeks.
Still, a Wall Street Journal analysis indicates that Utah has only vaccinated 11.4% of the total population with at least one dose – the lowest of all states.
Cox said he hates the way the newspaper calculated that statistic because it doesn’t take into account the large population of children in Utah who don’t qualify for vaccines. Census data shows that about 29% of Utah’s population is under the age of 18, the largest percentage in the country.
“We can’t change that formula,” Cox said. “All we can do is get the vaccines in weapons that come to us, and that’s what we’re doing.”
The disproportionate number of children in Utah also affects the number of vaccines the federal government assigns to Utah, Cox said. Bad weather last week prevented a shipment of 36,000 Moderna vaccines from arriving in Utah, which also caused the state to regress somewhat, the governor added. But those doses have now arrived in the state, and Utah is making up for the soil, he said.
Cox said he would rather have a large percentage of people over 70 vaccinated than a smaller percentage of the total Utah population, because the majority of COVID-19 deaths are those over 70.
“This is what Utah is once again doing in incredible ways,” said Cox. “That’s where our focus is.”
Next week, the state will release a plan to vaccinate more members of traditionally disadvantaged populations, such as Hispanics and Latinos and Pacific Islanders, who have been disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, Cox said. The plan has already been implemented in practice, but will be released to the public next week, he said.
Health department data shows minority groups are vaccinated at a much slower rate than white Utahns. White people are vaccinated at the rate of nearly 14,000 vaccinations per 100,000 people and account for more than 60% of the total number of vaccines administered in the state so far.
Hispanics and Latinos are vaccinated at just 4,720 per 100,000 people, and the rate for Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders is just under 3,600 per 100,000 people.
For about one-third of the vaccines administered, the race of the person receiving the dose is unknown, according to the health department website, so the data may not be a fully accurate representation of which ethnicities are being vaccinated. Still, the state has plans to work with community partners to get the vaccine into those disadvantaged communities, Cox said.
State leaders will work with churches and other community partners to accomplish that and to ease hesitation about vaccines in those communities, Cox said. Health officials will work to spread the word that the vaccines are safe and effective for people who still have concerns.
Cox said that instead of focusing on how many people are not getting vaccinated, the state has shifted to an “abundant mindset” in preparation for the much larger amounts of vaccine doses expected to be assigned to the state in the coming weeks and months.
“In a few weeks, we’ll have more vaccine than we know what to do with it,” the governor joked. “We know what to do with it. … As of April and May, our main concern is vaccine hesitation, like how we can convince people to get this vaccine, because we have so many of them. Where our focus should be. “
New COVID-19 cases
On Thursday, the number of COVID-19 cases in Utah increased by 832, with 11 more deaths and 18,563 more vaccinations, according to the Utah Department of Health. There are an estimated 18,561 active COVID-19 cases in Utah.
Four of the deaths occurred last month but were still under investigation by the medical examiner’s office, the health department said. The state also reported 18,563 additional vaccinations on Thursday.
The rolling seven-day average number of positive cases per day is now 723, according to the health department. The positive test rate per day for that period reported with the “people over people” method is now 12.4%. The positive test rate per day over seven days calculated with the “test over test” method is now 5.7%.
There are currently 221 COVID-19 patients hospitalized in Utah, including 87 in intensive care units, state data shows. About 74% of all intensive care beds in Utah are occupied Thursday, including about 77% of the intensive care beds in the state’s 16 referral hospitals. About 53% of non-IC hospital beds are occupied in Utah, state data shows.
A total of 660,444 vaccines were administered in the state, up from 641,881 on Wednesday. Of those, 229,526 are second doses of the vaccine, state data shows.
Thursday’s new numbers indicate a 0.2% increase in positive cases since Wednesday. Of the 2,189,176 people tested for COVID-19 so far in Utah, 16.9% have tested positive for the disease. The total number of tests conducted rose to 3,765,520 Thursday, an increase of 21,176 from Wednesday. Of those, 8,582 were tests from people who had not previously been tested for COVID-19.
The 11 deaths reported Thursday were:
- A Davis County woman who was between the ages of 65 and 84 and was hospitalized when she died
- A Davis County woman over the age of 85 living in a long-term care facility
- A Salt Lake County man between the ages of 65 and 84 who was hospitalized when he died
- A Salt Lake County man who was between the ages of 25 and 44 and was not hospitalized when he died
- A Tooele County woman who was between the ages of 45 and 64 and was not hospitalized when she died
- A Tooele County woman over the age of 85 who was hospitalized when she died
- A Utah County woman who was over 85 and living in a long-term care facility
- A woman in Utah County who was between the ages of 65 and 84 and lived in a long-term care facility
- A Utah County man over the age of 85 living in a long-term care facility
- A woman from Weber County who was between the ages of 65 and 84 and was hospitalized when she died
- A Weber County man who was between the ages of 45 and 64 and was not hospitalized when he died
Thursday’s totals give Utah a total of 369,433 confirmed cases, with 14,597 total hospitalizations and 1,890 total deaths from the disease. A total of 348,982 Utah COVID-19 cases are now estimated to have been recovered.
