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SALT LAKE CITY – Utah’s mask tenure will expire for the most part on April 10 – but that doesn’t mean everyone should celebrate the day by throwing off their masks, a public health expert has advised.
The date on which the state’s term ends was determined by a bill that was passed by the state legislature last week. Lawmakers said the date had the blessing of Governor Spencer Cox and the Utah Department of Health. The governor confirmed last week that he supports the bill’s term deadline, although he has yet to officially sign it.
Parts of a mandate could exist beyond April 10, such as face masks in businesses or schools, but HB294 also set a July 1 deadline for all public health orders.
Even as the April date approaches, several health experts have urged individuals to exercise caution in public places. This includes Dr. Todd Vento, infectious disease physician for Intermountain Healthcare. That’s why he advises Utahns to continue wearing masks on April 10 and beyond, especially in indoor public spaces with less ventilation.
“Honestly, I would say that there is no difference between April 9 and April 10; it is a random date,” he said, before acknowledging the stipulations which extend certain parts of the mandate. beyond April 10.
It should be noted that there are stipulations that would keep certain requirements in place between April 10 and July 1. For example, face masks might still be needed for events and locations of more than 50 people beyond April 10. This includes businesses and schools.
State or local health ordinances could remain in place until July 1 if the state’s 14-day case rate is above 191 per 100,000 population, using the seven intensive care unit. days of COVID-19-related condition is greater than 15%, or if the condition remains below 1.63 million primary doses of assigned COVID-19 vaccine.
“I wouldn’t consider April 10 to be anything different from my own personal protection and the personal protection of others,” Vento added. “If I’m not in public I should probably be careful if I go to a place that now has 100% occupancy and I don’t know their ventilation system and people don’t wear masks, because we haven’t a large portion of our population been vaccinated and they are still at risk even though we have lower cases and fewer viruses than, say, we had after Thanksgiving (and) after Christmas.
“The reality is, we still have the virus. We still have a moving average of over 500 days out of seven, and we still have – depending on what statistic you use – 4% or 8%… testing for positivity,” he continued. “Those were numbers we had when we were locked out, so I know we’ve changed a lot. For example, we’ve accepted a lot because people want to go back to work and want to be normal. where we are before us is the reality we need to address, not the reality we want it to be. We need to work towards that reality, and so I encourage people to continue to use these precautions until (greater collective immunity is achieved). “
The adjusted mandate expiration date came just weeks after the Utah Department of Health announced criteria to end the mask mandate in the state. State officials have said they will begin phasing out the warrant in low transmission counties after the state receives just over 1.63 million allocated first-order doses. A main dose is considered to be the first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine, or of the Johnson & Johnson single-dose vaccine.
State Department of Health officials said the target of 1.63 million first-order doses represents about 70% of Utah’s adult population. Health experts have said that 70% to 90% of herd immunity would likely need to be achieved to end the pandemic.
While the state plans to make the vaccine eligible for all adults in Utah on April 1, Cox staff estimated this week that Utah will have about 1.5 million vaccines allocated by April 10. , or just under 70%.
Vento said there were still “a lot” of people hesitant to receive the vaccine. These include cultural, religious, access or mistrust barriers. Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson last week announced Utah’s new vaccine “roadmap” to address some gaps, particularly around access.
“We are not going to reach 90% of the vaccinated. We still estimate that 70% to 80% is our estimated herd immunity – most of which will be vaccine-induced herd immunity, because we don’t know how long the natural immunity is. will last, ”Vento said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new guidelines this week on when masks can come off. The guidelines state that fully vaccinated people – who have received both injections of a two-dose vaccine or the Johnson & Johnson vaccine – may congregate indoors with other fully vaccinated people or congregate indoors with unvaccinated people from another household without a mask if the person does not live or live with someone at increased risk of COVID-19.
The biggest concern, according to Vento, is that governments have and will continue to ease restrictions before better collective immunity is established. This not only carries a risk of further spread, but also the risk of the SARS-CoV-2 virus mutating beyond strains that vaccine makers have already become “really worried about.”
“The more they transmit, the more they replicate,” he said. “The more they molt, the more chance there is for a mutation that would not be covered by the vaccine.”
That’s why he, along with other public health experts in Utah and the United States, is urging people to get vaccinated as soon as it’s available to them.
Why does Utah have fewer confirmed variants?
Vento addressed all kinds of questions about the pandemic during the virtual question-and-answer session with members of the media on Friday, including those about variant strains of the coronavirus and how they might affect vaccination efforts.
This week, the state’s health department began reporting the results of three variants of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. Data updated Friday showed that 67 cases of the “UK” strain were found in Utah, with no confirmed cases of the “South Africa” or “Brazil” strains. He had listed 33 cases of British variants on Thursday.
The South African strain, officially called B.1.351, is the variant that prompted Moderna to begin a trial of an updated vaccine to ensure that it protects people as effectively as the primary strain that emerged in the end of 2019.
So far there is a lot of good data on so much of the use of our therapeutics and also our vaccines that there should be answers, but there is also data that prompts us to maintain this caution, especially with this strain from South Africa.
– Dr Todd Vento, infectious disease specialist at Intermountain Healthcare
Vento said that one of the reasons the number of variant cases in Utah is low is that the United States has not tested as many variants as other countries around the world, especially compared to the ‘Europe. This is in addition to a geographic division between the continents where the three largest variants have emerged.
Of course, there are other strains of the coronavirus. Vento said Friday that there are known cases of the so-called “California variant” in Utah and a few other variants. These strains are not currently reported in Department of Health data and they are not as well studied in terms of impact on the effectiveness of vaccination.
He said he wanted to acknowledge the current facts on the variants to provide a full scope of the COVID-19 situation and not provide a perspective that is either “catastrophic” or sugar coated.
“(That’s) just the reality. RNA viruses mutate, and a lot of these mutations don’t do anything. Some of these mutations actually improve the ability of the virus and make it easier for the virus to bounce back into the community,” he mentioned. “So far there is a lot of good data on so much of the use of our therapeutics and also our vaccines that there should be answers, but there is also data that prompts us to maintain this caution, especially with this strain from South Africa. “
COVID-19 beyond the pandemic
Vento also addressed the possible future after COVID-19 is no longer a pandemic, and he said the future could very well mean at least one more “booster shot.”
Keep in mind that the manufacturers of the drugs behind the vaccines have still not completed their vaccine studies. They have about eight to 10 months of data from 100,000 people that will help determine exactly how long the vaccine provides protection against the coronavirus, Vento said Friday.
This means that it is still unclear whether the vaccine is a one-time deal or will become an annual vaccine like the flu. There is also a theory that another dose could help against newer variants of COVID-19. While all of these possibilities are possibilities, there are still a lot of unknowns.
What Vento advised on Friday is that people could “count” that the current vaccination effort will not end COVID-19 vaccines.
“I would expect, and I think people should expect that they need some sort 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 might find that we need ‘Moderna-type 2’ as our next vaccine. . “
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