SALT LAKE CITY: The mandate of the Utah mask, for the most part, will expire on April 10, but that doesn’t mean everyone has to celebrate the day by throwing away the masks, a public health expert advised.
The date the state term ends was determined by a bill that passed the state legislature last week. Lawmakers said the date had the blessing of Governor Spencer Cox and the Utah health department. The governor confirmed last week that he supported the term of the bill, although he has not yet officially signed it.
Some parts of a mandate could exist beyond April 10, such as masks to companies or schools, but HB294 also set a deadline for the July 1 public health order.
As April approaches, several health experts have urged people to exercise caution in public settings. This includes Dr. Todd Vento, an infectious disease physician for Intermountain Healthcare. That’s why he advises Utahns to continue wearing masks on April 10 and beyond, especially in less ventilated public indoor spaces.
“Honestly, I would say there are no differences between April 9 and April 10; it is a random date,” he said, before acknowledging stipulations that extend parts of the mandate beyond April 10.
It is worth noting that there are stipulations that would allow to maintain some requirements in force between April 10 and July 1. For example, facial covers may still be needed for events and locations with more than 50 people beyond April 10, which include businesses and schools.
State or local health orders could remain in effect until July 1 if the state’s 14-day case rate is higher than 191 per 100,000 people, if the use of the intensive care unit of seven days of COVID-19-bound status exceeds 15% or if the state remains below 1.63 million primary doses of COVID-19 vaccine assigned.
“I wouldn’t see April 10th as anything other than my personal protection and the personal protection of other people,” Vento added. “If I’m not in public, I should probably be careful if I go to a place that occupies 100% now and I don’t know its ventilation system and people don’t wear masks, because we don’t have a large part of our population going vaccinate and is still at risk even though we have lower cases and fewer viruses than, for example, we had after Thanksgiving (and) after Christmas.
“The reality is that we still have the virus. We still have an average of more than 500 seven-day days and we still have, depending on the statistics you use, 4% or 8% … prove positive,” he continued. “They were numbers we had when we were closed, so I know we’ve changed a lot. Like we’ve accepted a lot because people want to go back to work and want to be normal. The reality we have is in front of us we have the reality we have to deal with , not the reality we want it to be. We need to work towards that reality and therefore encourage people to continue to use these precautions until greater immunity from the herd is reached. “
The adjusted term expiration date came just weeks after the Utah Department of Health announced the criteria to end the mask mandate in the state. State officials said they would begin phasing out the mandate in low-transmission counties after the state had received just over 1.63 million in assigned premium doses. The first dose of Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines, or the Johnson & Johnson one-dose vaccine, is considered a primary dose.
State Department of Health officials said the target of 1.63 million major doses represents approximately 70% of Utah’s adult population. Health experts have said that between 70% and 90% of the herd’s immunity should probably be achieved to end the pandemic.
While the state plans to make the vaccine eligible for all Utah adults on April 1, Cox staff estimated this week that Utah would have approximately 1.5 million vaccines assigned before. of April 10, which falls by 70%.
Vento said there are still “a lot” of people who are hesitant to get the vaccine. These include cultural, religious, access or distrust barriers. Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson last week announced Utah’s new vaccine “roadmap” with the goal of closing some of the gaps, especially in terms of access.
“We will not reach 90% of vaccines. We still estimate 70% to 80% as estimated herd immunity, most of which will be vaccine-derived immunities because we are not sure how long natural immunity will last.” , said Vento.
This week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new guidelines on when masks can be taken off. The guidelines state that people who are fully vaccinated (after receiving both shots of a two-shot vaccine or the Johnson & Johnson vaccine) may meet indoors with other people who are completely vaccinated or reunite. be indoors with unvaccinated people from another home without a mask if the person does not live or live with someone at increased risk of COVID-19.
According to Vento, the biggest concern is that governments have and will continue to relax restrictions before better immunity of the herd is established. This not only produces the risk of new spread, but the risk that the SARS-CoV-2 virus will mutate beyond strains that vaccine manufacturers have already “really worried” about.
“The more they transmit, the more they replicate,” he said. “The more they mutate, the more chances there are of a mutation that would not be covered by the vaccine.”
That’s why, along with other public health experts in Utah and the United States, he urges people to get the vaccine as soon as it’s available to them.
Why do Utah have fewer confirmed variants?
Vento on Friday addressed all sorts of questions about the pandemic during the virtual question and answer session with members of the media, including those on variant strains of the coronavirus and how vaccination efforts could be affected.
This week, the state health department began reporting the findings of three variants of the coronavirus caused by COVID-19. Data updated on Friday showed that 67 cases of the “UK” strain have been found in Utah, with no confirmed cases of the “South Africa” or “Brazil” strains. He had listed 33 cases varying from the UK on Thursday.
The South African strain, officially called B.1.351, is the variant that prompted Moderna to start a trial of an updated vaccine to ensure it protects people in the most efficient way than the primary strain that emerged in late 2019. .
So far, there is a lot of good data on the use of our therapeutics and also of our vaccines that should give answers, but there are also some data that make us maintain this precaution, especially with this South African strain.
– Dr. Todd Vento, an infectious disease doctor at Intermountain Healthcare
Vento said one of the reasons the number of case variants in Utah is low is that the United States has not tested variants as much as other counties around the world, especially compared to Europe. This adds to a certain geographical division between the continents where the three largest variants have emerged.
Of course, there are other strains of coronavirus. Vento said Friday that cases of what is known as the “California variant” in Utah and some other variants are known. These strains are not currently reported in health department data and are not as well studied in terms of their impact on vaccination effectiveness.
He said he wanted to acknowledge the current facts about the variants to provide a full picture of the situation of COVID-19 and not offer a perspective that is “lost and gloomy” or sugar-coated.
“(It’s) just reality. RNA viruses mutate and a lot of these mutations do nothing. Some of these mutations really improve the fitness of the virus and make it easier for the community to bounce back to the community,” he said. . dit. “So far, there is a lot of good data on the use of our therapeutics and also of our vaccines that should give answers, but there is also some data that makes us maintain this precaution, especially with this South African strain. “.
COVID-19 beyond the pandemic
Vento also addressed the possible future after COVID-19 ceased to be a pandemic, and said the future could very well mean at least another “booster shot” of the vaccine.
Keep in mind that the manufacturers of drugs behind vaccines have not yet completed their studies on vaccines. They have about eight to ten months of data from 100,000 individuals that will help figure out exactly how long the vaccine offers protection against the coronavirus, Vento noted Friday.
This means it is not yet known if the vaccine is a one-time deal or will become an annual flu vaccine. There is also some theory that another dose could help against the new variants of COVID-19. While all of these are possibilities, there are still many unknowns.
What Vento advised Friday is that people could “count on” the fact that the current vaccination effort will not be the end of COVID-19 vaccines.
“I would wait and I think people would have to wait until they needed some kind of additional vaccine at some point,” he said. “Whether it’s every year, every two years, or if we have a big increase in a new type of variant, we may find that we need ‘Modern type 2’ as the next vaccine. That kind of practice.”