SALT LAKE CITY – Utah’s new public health order extended state mandate to wear masks to stop the spread of coronavirus, providing a better view of one of the hottest questions asked for months during the pandemic COVID-19: When can we take the masks?
Although no specific date was set in writing, the Utah Department of Health on Tuesday offered an important benchmark that would trigger the process to lift mask warrants.
We now know that counties with “low” transmission rates will no longer have statewide requirements eight weeks after the state receives just over 1.63 million first-dose doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. .
Currently, a major dose is the first dose of Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines, but it also includes the Johnson & Johnson one-dose vaccine that is nearing final approval by the Food and Drug Administration.
Why 1.63 million?
The exact number to start the process to lift the mask mandate is by no means arbitrary. The number represents 70 percent of Utah’s adult population, said Tom Hudachko, a spokesman for the Utah Department of Health.
As the Cleveland Clinic noted, it is expected that between 50% and 80% of the population will need 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 an estimated figure at the start of the pandemic.
There are also early signs that all 1.63 million doses of the first vaccine would be given once the assigned number is reached. Most of the two age groups in the state health department’s data that have had access to the COVID-19 vaccine for more than a month now have received at least one dose. The data show that 71% of Utahns aged 70 to 79 years and 69% of Utahns aged 80 or older have received a primary vaccine.
When will we reach 1.63 million?
There are still many vaccines that need to be allocated for Utah to reach 1,633,000.
The health department reported Tuesday that the state has allocated 444,905 first doses with more than 410,000 Utahns receiving at least the first dose of the vaccine.
This means that more than 90% of the vaccines assigned to the first dose to date have already ended up in the arms of Utahns (again, showing the popularity of the vaccine so far), but it also means that the department, according to the its own numbers, on Tuesday it was about 27% towards what it would need to reach 1.63 million.
The good news is that there have been more vaccines 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 flowing from the beginning and remains so now, making it difficult to project an exact answer as to when Utah will reach a certain number.
This fluidity was the basis of a New York Times data model that examined the nation’s vaccination process in general. He found that at its current rate of 1.7 million shots a day, the United States would achieve vaccine immunity in November, but would achieve total immunity (the number of people vaccinated plus the number of people who went immunize after recovering from the disease) in June.
If up to 3 million shots a day were accelerated as a result of an “increase in supply,” then total immunity could be achieved as early as May with a vaccine immunity that would reach 70% in July.
Still, there are some rough estimates as to when Utah could reach 1.63 million.
On Feb. 4, Gov. Spencer Cox said projections for the Modern, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson vaccines indicated about 130,000 major doses assigned to Utah in early March. If that total started the week of Feb. 28 through March 6 and nothing changed, it would take about nine weeks to exceed 1.63 million. The ninth week of this scenario is the week of April 25th to May 1st.
Cox added that the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is expected to get FDA approval in the coming weeks, could result in tens of thousands of additional major vaccines each week starting in April. The addition of a fourth vaccine would also speed up the process and could advance that date earlier according to what was said a few weeks ago.
But again, the numbers have been fluid and the planned dose totals have changed since then. Officially, the Utah Department of Health still estimates that 1.63 million premium doses will be allocated “later this spring.” That is when a primary dose is expected to be allocated for approximately 70% of all Utahns currently eligible for the vaccine.
In an email, Hudachko told KSL.com on Wednesday that new numbers presented by Congress this week indicate that “it is certainly possible” that the state could reach 1.63 million premium doses allocated in the first week of May. .
If that were the case, it augurs well for the state’s effort to ensure that all adults in Utah who want a vaccine have access to it by the end of spring. It also gives enough time for the assigned doses to end up in Utahns ’arms in the weeks following the 1.63 million allocation.
When do the masks come off?
Okay, let’s get back to the new stipulation of the health order that went into effect on Tuesday.
If Utah had that 1.63 million dose on Tuesday when this benchmark was announced, counties with low transmission rates could return to office on April 20th.
If the state reaches 1.63 million premium doses allocated in early May, it is possible that some Utah counties may be exempt from the mask mandate by the end of June. In fact, if the health department started the clock on May 3, the term would end on June 28 for some areas.
That could explain Cox’s comment Tuesday, in which he tweeted: “I really think we’ll celebrate without a mask in large groups on the 4th (if not earlier).”
There is a second component to the question “when can masks be removed?” and that revolves around case trends, based on the current health order. If the order went into effect immediately, only five Utah counties would be affected. This is because Daggett, Garfield, Piute, Rich, and Wayne counties are currently the only counties in the state in the “low transmission” category.
A county must meet at least two of these criteria to achieve “low” transmission:
- A countywide “test over test” positivity rate below 5%
- A 14-day case rate is less than 101 per 100,000 people
- Average bed use of the intensive care unit for seven days statewide less than 69% and average ICU COVID-19 utilization rate for seven days statewide below 6%
This is where the administration of assigned vaccines still comes into play. At the same time, COVID-19 trends are starting to lean in the right direction. The state’s seven-day average for new COVID-19 cases has dropped 56% in the past four weeks (January 25-Monday) according to data obtained Tuesday. Utilization of all state hospitals in the ICU fell to 69% on Tuesday; approximately 18% of these ICU needs were related to COVID-19.
In order for these downward trends to continue in the coming weeks, health experts advise it, and the health order requires Utahns to wear masks in all public areas inside and outside, physically distance themselves from other homes, and wash your hands thoroughly.
Masks may only be removed when the appropriate number of required vaccines has been assigned and the trends in the COVID-19 case are maintained.