SALT LAKE CITY – Utah’s mask mandate will usually expire on April 10 – but that doesn’t mean everyone should celebrate the day by throwing away their masks, a public health expert said.
The date on which the state’s mandate ends was determined by a bill passed by the State Legislature last week. Lawmakers said the date had the blessing of government Spencer Cox and the Utah Department of Health. The governor confirmed last week that he supports the deadline for the bill, although he has yet to officially sign it.
Some parts of a mandate may exist after April 10, such as masks in businesses or schools, but HB294 also sets a deadline for all public health orders on July 1.
Even as the April date approached, several health experts urged individuals to be careful in the public environment. These include Drs. Todd Vento, an infectious disease physician at Intermountain Healthcare. Therefore, he advises Utahns to continue wearing masks on and after April 10, especially in public spaces with less ventilation.
“Honestly, I would say there is no difference between April 9 and April 10; it is a random date,” he said before acknowledging provisions that extend parts of the mandate to April 10.
It is noteworthy that there are provisions that will apply from April 10 to July 1. For example, face cover may still be needed for events and venues with more than 50 people after April 10th. This includes businesses and schools.
State or local health orders can remain in effect until July 1 if the state’s 14-day case rate is above 191 per 100,000 people, using the state’s seven-day intensive care unit associated with COVID-19 is higher than 15%, or the state remains below 1.63 million primary doses of assigned COVID-19 vaccine.
“I will not consider anything other than my own personal protection and the personal protection of others on April 10,” Vento added. ‘If I’m not in public, I should probably be careful when I go to a place that is now 100% occupied and I do not know about their ventilation system and people do not wear masks because we do not have a large part of our population has been vaccinated and they are still at risk, although we have fewer cases and fewer viruses than, for example, after Christmas.
“The reality is that we still have the virus. We still have a seven-day average of more than 500 days, and we still have – depending on what statistics you use – 4% or 8% … test positivity, “he continued. “It was numbers we had when we were locked up, so I know we changed a lot. Like, we accepted a lot because people want to work again and be normal. The reality we are in front of us is the reality that we must address, not the reality we want. We must work towards reality, and therefore I want to encourage people to use these precautions until (more herd immunity is achieved). “
The adjusted expiration date is only a few weeks after the Utah Department of Health announced criteria to end the mask mandate in the state. Government officials said they would increase the mandate in low-transfer countries, after the state received a little over 1.63 million allocated prime doses. A single dose is considered to be the first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine, or the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
State officials said the target at the first dose of 1.63 million represents about 70% of Utah’s adult population. Health experts have said that 70% to 90% of herd immunity is likely to be reached to end the pandemic.
While the state does plan to take the vaccine into consideration for every adult in Utah on April 1, Cox’s staff this week estimated that Utah will have about 1.5 million vaccines by April 10, which is only 70% shy.
Vento said there are also still ‘many’ people who are reluctant to receive the vaccine. These include cultural, religious, barriers to entry or mistrust. Lt. Governor Deidre Henderson announced last week that Utah’s new ‘roadmap’ for vaccines should close a number of gaps, particularly with regard to access.
“We are not going to get up to 90% of the vaccine. We still estimate 70% to 80% as our estimated herd immunity – most of which is vaccine-induced herd immunity because we are not sure how long the natural immunity will not hold, ‘said Vento.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did announce new guidelines this week on when the masks could come off. The guidelines state that people who have been fully vaccinated – both received shots from a two-shot vaccine or the Johnson & Johnson vaccine – may contract indoors with other fully vaccinated or indoors with non-vaccinated from another household without a mask if the person does not or does not live with someone at increased risk for COVID-19.
According to Vento, the biggest concern is that governments will have restrictions and relax before better herd immunity is introduced. This not only carries the risk of new spread, but also the risk that the SARS-CoV-2 virus mutates as the strains about which vaccine manufacturers have already become ‘really concerned’.
“The more they send out, the more they repeat,” he said. “The more they mutate, the greater the chance of a mutation that will not be covered by the vaccine.”
Therefore, he is appealing to people to get the vaccine with other public health experts in Utah and across the US as soon as it is available.
Why does Utah have less confirmed variants?
Vento addressed all sorts of questions about the pandemic with members of the media during the virtual question-and-answer session on Friday, including questions about variant strains of the coronavirus and how it could affect vaccination efforts.
This week, the state health department began reporting findings of three variants of the coronavirus that cause COVID-19. The data updated on Friday showed that 67 cases of the “United Kingdom” strain were found in Utah, with no confirmed cases of “South Africa” or “Brazil”. It listed 33 cases of British variants on Thursday.
The South African strain, officially named B.1.351, is the variant that prompted Moderna to start a trial of an updated vaccine to ensure that it protects people just as effectively as the primary strain that emerges in late 2019. It.
So far, there is very good data on the use of our drugs and also on our vaccines that there should be reactions, but there is also data that allows us to maintain the warning, especially with the tension from South Africa.
– Dr. Todd Vento, a physician at Infectious Diseases at Intermountain Healthcare
Vento said one of the reasons the number of cases in Utah is low is that the US has not tested as many species as other countries around the world, especially not in Europe. It is, moreover, a geographical division between the continents where the three largest variants originated.
Of course, there are other strains of the coronavirus. Vento said Friday there are known cases known as the ‘California variant’ in Utah and a few other variants. These strains are not currently reported in the health department’s data and are not so well studied in terms of their impact on vaccination.
He said he wanted to acknowledge the current facts about variants to provide a full range of the COVID-19 situation, and not want to give a prospect that is either ‘damned’ or sugar-coated.
“(It is) just the reality. RNA viruses mutate, and many of the mutations do nothing. Some of these mutations improve the fitness of the virus and make it easier for the virus to bounce in the community,” he said. . said. “So far, there is very good data on the use of our therapy and on our vaccines that there should be reactions, but there is also data that we can maintain the warning, especially with the tension from South Africa.”
COVID-19 outside the pandemic
Vento also addressed the possible future after COVID-19 is no longer a pandemic, and he said that the future could very well mean another ‘vaccine’ booster shot ‘.
Remember that the medicine manufacturers behind the vaccines have not yet completed their studies on the vaccines. They have about eight to ten months of data from 100,000 individuals that will help find out exactly how long the vaccine provides protection against the coronavirus, Vento showed Friday.
This means that it is still not known whether the vaccine is a one-time agreement or will become an annual vaccine such as flu. There is also a theory that a different dose may help against new COVID-19 variants. Although all these possibilities are, there are still many unknowns.
What Vento advised Friday is that people can count on the current vaccination effort not to be the end of COVID-19 vaccines.
“I would expect, and I think people should expect, that at some point they will need some kind of extra vaccine,” he said. “Whether it’s every year, every two years – or if we’re getting a big boom of a new kind of variant, we might see that we need ‘Modern Type 2’ as our next vaccination. This kind of practice. “