SALT LAKE CITY – State officials are confident that sufficient doses of the COVID-19 vaccine will be available to any Utahn who wants one by the end of next month.
“We hope to have enough doses available by mid-April,” said Joe Dougherty, a spokesman for Utah’s COVID-19 Response. “It is a really aggressive target that is based on what we expect to happen.”
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The state expects the production of the life-saving shot to accelerate in the coming weeks.
“There was a commitment by vaccine manufacturers to increase doses and take even more of them to the states,” said Dougherty.
Research shows that about 78% of all Utahns want to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
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This promising news does not mean that the state is planning to withdraw its masked mandate anytime soon.
A spokesman for Governor Spencer Cox said the governor will continue to follow the advice of public health experts.
“Masks will be our best tool at the moment,” said Dougherty. “We are in this race now to vaccinate as many people as possible before there is a lot of spread of the variants in our state.”
Last week, the governor announced that mask mandates would be suspended in areas with low transmission of the virus, eight weeks after the state administered 1.6 million doses of the vaccine. On Tuesday, 741,297 were administered in Utah.
This could happen as early as the end of June.
READ: Utah defines exit plan for mask mandates, COVID-19 restrictions
“This should be encouraging, as we only have to do this for a few more months,” said Dougherty. “Make sure the people around you are safe and we are going to end this pandemic.”