SALT LAKE CITY – As Utah Governor Spencer Cox is more eligible than expected on Thursday, he can consider the vaccine, he has remained confident that a return to normal in the summer will come.
Looking at his mask, Cox strongly stated that his days were numbered.
“I’m telling you, I’m not going to wear this (mask) on the Fourth of July. I’m going to be in a parade somewhere,” Cox told a news conference Thursday morning. “If I’m wrong, I’ll come here and admit I’m wrong, and we’ll do something else.”
Utah state epidemiologist Angela Dunn has remained more pragmatic. She said normalcy during the summer “is definitely possible”, but that everyone in the state will make an effort to continue wearing masks, socializing, restricting gatherings and practicing all other public health measures the civil servants proclaimed in the past year.
At the news conference where Cox, who has always been an enthusiastic optimist, was passionate about the current COVID-19 situation in Utah, the governor announced that state residents 16 years and older who have certain comorbidities are now eligible for the COVID -19 vaccine, a few days earlier than expected. The governor occupied about 240,000 Utahns.
Previously, the admission date for Utahns with concomitant medication was March 1, but Cox said these persons are eligible immediately. The full list of comorbidities 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 approved the Pfizer vaccine for people aged 16 and 17 only, Cox said. If people in that age group want to get the vaccine, they should plan 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 is provided at coronavirus.utah.gov/vaccine.
Cox said he is focused on getting shots in the arms as quickly as possible, especially for the more vulnerable population rather than looking at the population of the state as a whole.
“We are committed to accelerating fitness, if possible,” Cox said.
The governor also announced Thursday that people who want the vaccine will no longer have to wait to make an appointment in their country. If you can find an appointment in another country, you can now make an appointment there. However, you must make your appointment for the second dose of vaccine in the same country where you made the appointment for the first dose, Cox said.
The Utah government, Spencer Cox, provided an update on the COVID-19 pandemic at a news conference on Thursday. Utah State Epidemiologist Angela Dunn is also speaking at the news conference. Watch the iteration here.
Fill in canning ground
At one point during the COVID-19 battle in Utah, intensive care units were perhaps hours away from being completely overwhelmed, Cox said. State leaders almost reached a point where they had to set up an ICA for triage at the Mountain America Expo Center in Sandy to deal with the large number of patients suffering from the disease.
But that did not happen. Instead of a triage ICU, the exhibition center is used to administer vaccines.
“We emphasize the positivity of what is happening there,” Cox said.
About 70% of Utahns’ age 70 and older are now vaccinated, according to Cox. Some provinces in Utah have vaccinated closer to 80% of the population in their areas, he added.
In addition, about 29% of the 65-69 age group now have at least one dose, Cox said. Eligible for the population last Thursday, and the vaccination of the people is expected to continue for several weeks.
However, an analysis by the Wall Street Journal indicates that Utah vaccinated only 11.4% of its total population with at least one dose – the lowest of any state.
Cox said he hates the way the newspaper calculates the statistics because it is not responsible for Utah’s large population of children who are not eligible. Census data show that approximately 29% of Utah’s population is younger than 18, the largest percentage in the country.
“We can not change the formula,” Cox said. “All we can do is get the vaccines in the arms that come to us, and that’s what we do.”
The excessive number of children in Utah also affects how many vaccines the federal government allocates to Utah, Cox said. Yesterday, weather last week prevented a shipment of 36,000 Modern vaccines from arriving in Utah, which also put the state back slightly, the governor added. But the doses have now arrived in the state and Utah is making up the ground, he said.
Cox said he would rather have a large percentage of people 70 years and older vaccinated than a smaller percentage of the total Utah population, because a majority of COVID-19 deaths were Utahs older than 70.
“This is where Utah succeeds again in incredible ways,” Cox said. “This is where our focus is.”
Next week, the state will announce a plan to vaccinate more members of traditionally subordinate populations, such as Hispanics and Latinos and Pacific residents, who have been disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, Cox said. The plan has already been implemented in practice, but will be announced to the public next week.
Data from the Department of Health show that minority groups are vaccinated at a much slower rate than white Utahns. White people are vaccinated at about 14,000 vaccinations per 100,000 people and account for more than 60% of the total vaccines administered so far in the state.
Latin Americans and Latinos are vaccinated at just 4,720 per 100,000 people, and the rate for indigenous peoples of Hawaii and the Pacific is just under 3,600 per 100,000 people.
According to the website of the Department of Health, about a third of the vaccines are unknown, according to the website of the Department of Health, the breed of the person receiving the dose, so the possibility can not quite accurately suggest which ethnicities are vaccinated . Nevertheless, the state has plans to work with community partners to get the vaccine into the underserved communities, Cox said.
State leaders will work with churches and other community partners to achieve this, and to reduce vaccine hesitation in those communities, Cox said. Health officials will try to spread the message that the vaccines are safe and effective for people who still have reservations.
Cox said the state, instead of focusing on how many people are not being vaccinated, has switched to an ‘abundance mindset’ in preparation for the much larger amounts of vaccine doses expected to be given to the state in the coming weeks and months. will be awarded.
“In a few weeks, we will have more vaccinations than we know what to do with,” the governor joked. “We know what to do with it. … From April and May, our biggest concern is to hesitate the vaccine, like how do we convince people to get this vaccine because we have so much of it. And that’s really where we focus must be. ‘
New cases COVID-19
On Thursday, Utah’s COVID-19 cases increased by 832, with another 11 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 are still being investigated by the state medical examiner’s office, the health department said. The state also reported 18,563 more vaccinations this morning.
According to the Department of Health, the average number of positive cases per day of seven days is now at 723. The positive test rate per day for the period reported using the “people over people” method is now 12.4%. The positive test rate per day of seven days, calculated using the ‘test over test’ method, is now 5.7%.
There are 221 COVID-19 patients currently hospitalized in Utah, including 87 in intensive care. About 74% of all Utah intensive care unit beds were occupied on Thursday, including about 77% of ICU beds in the 16 referral hospitals in the state. About 53% of non-ICU hospital beds are inhabited in Utah, state data shows.
A total of 660,444 vaccines were administered in the state, compared to 641,881 on Wednesday. Of these, 229,526 are second doses of the vaccine, according to state data.
Thursday’s new figures point to a 0.2% increase in positive cases since Wednesday. Of the 2,189,176 people tested so far for COVID-19 in Utah, 16.9% tested positive for the disease. The number of tests carried out rose to 3,765,520 on Thursday, from 21,176 to Wednesday. Of these, 8582 were tests of humans not previously tested for COVID-19.
The 11 deaths reported on Thursday were:
- A Davis County woman who was between 65 and 84 and was hospitalized when she died
- A Davis County woman over the age of 85 who was a resident of a long-term care facility
- A Salt Lake County man who was between 65 and 84 and 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 45 and 64 years old and was not admitted to the hospital when she died
- A Tooele County woman who was over 85 and was hospitalized when she died
- A woman in Utah County who was over 85 and a resident of a long-term care facility
- A woman in Utah County who was between 65 and 84 years old and a resident of a long-term care facility
- A man from Utah County who was over 85 and a resident of a long-term care facility
- A Weber County woman who was between 65 and 84 and was hospitalized when she died
- A Weber County man who was between 45 and 64 years old and was not admitted to the hospital when he died
The total Thursday total gives Utah 369,433 total confirmed cases, with 14,597 total hospitalizations and 1,890 total deaths due to the disease. A total of 348,982 cases in Utah COVID-19 are estimated to be repaired.
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