MURRAY – Utah is experiencing one of the worst COVID-19 outbreaks in the country with the fourth highest number of new cases, according to state health data.
A doctor from Intermountain Healthcare said Utah is still seeing the results of the holiday.
“We are now at the greatest risk of getting COVID, higher than we have ever been before,” said Dr. Todd Vento, physician at Infectious Diseases at Intermountain Healthcare, said. “Therefore, we must make a commitment to complete this race.”
Currently, the virus is just as contagious in the Beehive States as it ever was, Vento said, despite the precautions Utahns has already taken. That is why he said that we should double down on complacency and pandemic fatigue.
“Our conclusion would be that this is the right time for a boom after the holidays,” Vento said.
If you meet with different people every day and do not wear a mask indoors in unventilated areas, he said, your risk is even greater.
With a moving average of 3,100 new cases per day and a positive percentage of more than 30%, Utah on Monday had the fourth highest number of new cases in the country. The number of cases per population has almost doubled in the last ten days.
“The next few weeks will be even more worrying because we have not yet seen all the hospitalizations of this case yield,” Vento said.
The CDC now estimates that 60% of COVID-19 transmission occurs in asymptomatic people.
“So another problem when you think about gathering more than one week, two weeks over the holidays, through the New Year holidays,” Vento said.
The doctor said we would not see the positive impact of the vaccine on our case numbers for months.
“It’s likely to get worse in terms of numbers,” Vento said. “So, more importantly, that by 2021 we should all commit again to taking the preventive public health measures that work.”
Therefore, he encouraged everyone to make these practices part of a New Year’s resolution.
“So when you leave home and put on your clothes, you should think you’re naked if you do not have a mask.”
“Masking, social distance and meeting people who do not live in our homes are just as important at the moment as ever,” he said.
So when you leave home and put on your clothes, you should think that you are naked if you do not have a mask.
-Dr. Todd Vento, Doctor of Infectious Diseases at Intermountain Healthcare
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Jed Boal