SALT LAKE CITY – Utah’s newest public health order has extended the state’s mandate to wear masks to stop the spread of coronavirus, giving a better perspective on one of the hottest questions in months. pandemic time COVID-19: When can we take off our masks?
While no specific date has been set in writing, the Utah Department of Health on Tuesday provided an important benchmark that would trigger the process of lifting the mask mandate.
We now know that counties with “low” transmission rates will no longer have national requirements eight weeks after the state receives just over 1.63 million doses allocated for the first time – also called “premiums” – vaccine doses COVID-19.
A primary dose is currently either the first dose of Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines, but is expected to include the Johnson & Johnson single-dose vaccine, which is nearing final approval by the Food and Drug Administration.
Why 1.63 million?
The exact number to start the process of lifting the mask mandate is not arbitrary at all. The number represents 70 percent of Utah’s adult population, said Tom Hudachko, a spokesman for the Utah Department of Health.
As mentioned by the Cleveland Clinic, it is expected that approximately 50% to 80% of the population will 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 beginning of the pandemic.
There are also early signs that all 1.63 million primary doses of vaccine would be given once the allotted number was 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 have now received at least one dose. The data show that 71% of Utahns aged between 70 and 79 years and 69% of Utahns over the age of 80 received a primary vaccine.
When will we reach 1.63 million?
There are still a lot of vaccines that need to be allocated for Utah to reach 1,633,000.
The health department reported Tuesday that the state received 444,905 first-dose doses, with more than 410,000 Utahns receiving at least the first dose of vaccine.
This means that over 90% of the vaccines allocated to the first doses so far have already reached Utahns (again, showing the popularity of the vaccine so far), but it also means the department, according to its own figures, on Tuesday was about 27% for what 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 allocated to states has been fluid from the beginning and remains so now, making it difficult to design an exact answer as to when Utah will reach a certain number.
This fluidity formed the basis of a New York Times data model that analyzed the national immunization process as a whole. He found that at the current rate of 1.7 million photos a day, the US would achieve vaccine immunity by November, but would achieve total immunity – the number of people vaccinated, plus the number of people who became immune after recovering from the disease – until June.
If up to 3 million photos a day were accelerated as a result of an “increase in supply”, then total immunity could be achieved as early as May, with vaccine immunity reaching 70% by July.
However, there are some rough estimates as to when Utah could reach 1.63 million.
On Feb. 4, Gov. Spencer Cox said projections for Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson vaccines indicate about 130,000 prime doses allocated to Utah by early March. If the total started the week of February 28 – March 6 and nothing would change, then it would take about nine weeks to exceed 1.63 million. The ninth week in this scenario is the week of April 25 – May 1.
Cox added that the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is expected to be approved by the FDA in the coming weeks, could lead to tens of thousands of additional vaccines each week, starting in April. The addition of a fourth vaccine would speed up the process as well, and could move that date faster based on what was said a few weeks ago.
But again, the numbers were fluid, and the total anticipated dose has changed since then. Officially, the Utah Department of Health still estimates that 1.63 million allocated prime doses will be reached “later this spring.” It is then expected that there will be a prime dose allocated for approximately 70% of the total Utahns currently eligible for the vaccine.
In an e-mail, Hudachko told KSL.com on Wednesday that new figures presented by Congress this week indicate that “it certainly seems possible” for the state to reach 1.63 million prime doses allocated by the first week of May.
In this case, the state’s effort to ensure that every adult in Utah who wants a vaccine will have access to one by the end of spring is auspicious. It also provides enough time for the allotted doses to reach Utahns in the weeks following the 1.63 million allotment point.
When will the masks come off?
OK, back to the new health care provision that went into effect on Tuesday.
If Utah had those 1.63 million doses on Tuesday, when this benchmark was announced, counties with low transmission rates could then return to office as early as April 20th.
If the state reaches 1.63 million prime doses allocated in early May, then it is possible that some counties in Utah will be exempt from the mask mandate until 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.
This could explain Cox’s comment on Tuesday, in which he posted on Twitter: “I really think we’ll celebrate without a mask in large groups until the 4th (if not earlier).”
There is a second component to the question “when can masks be removed?” and which revolves around case trends, based on the current health order. If the order went into effect immediately, only five counties in Utah 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 “reduced” transmission:
- A “test over test” positivity rate at county level below 5%
- A 14-day case was less than 101 per 100,000 people
- National bed use of seven days of intensive care, less than 69%, and nationally, COVID-19 ICU utilization rate below seven days below 6%
This is where the administration of the allocated vaccines comes into play. At the same time, COVID-19 trends are starting to lean in the right direction. The national seven-day average for new COVID-19 cases has fallen by 56% in the past four weeks – from January 25 to Monday – based on data obtained on Tuesday. ICU usage of all hospitals in the state fell to 69% on Tuesday; approximately 18% of these intensive care needs were related to COVID-19.
For these downward trends to continue in the coming weeks, health experts recommend, and the health order requires utahns to wear masks in all public areas inside and outside, to physically distance themselves from other households and to wash their hands thoroughly. .
The masks will be allowed to come off only when the appropriate number of vaccines is allocated and the trends of COVID-19 remain low.