SALT LAKE CITY – Utah’s mask term, for the most part, will expire on April 10 – but that doesn’t mean everyone should celebrate the day by throwing away their masks, advised a public health expert.
The end date of the state’s mandate was determined by a bill that passed 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 term of the project, although he has not yet officially signed it.
Some parts of a mandate may exist beyond April 10, such as masks in companies or schools, but HB294 also set a July 1 deadline for all public health requests.
Even as the April date approaches, several health experts recommend that people be careful in public settings. This includes Dr. Todd Vento, an infectious disease physician at Intermountain Healthcare. That is why he advises Utahns to continue wearing masks from April 10, especially in indoor public spaces with less ventilation.
“Honestly, I would say that there is no difference between April 9th and April 10th; it’s a random date, ”he said, before recognizing stipulations that extend parts of the mandate beyond April 10.
It is important to note that there are stipulations that would maintain some requirements in effect between April 10 and July 1. For example, facial coverage may still be required for events and venues with more than 50 people after April 10. This includes businesses and schools.
State or local health orders may remain in effect until July 1 if the state’s 14-day case rate is above 191 per 100,000 people, the use of the COVID-19 seven-day intensive care unit is above 15%, or the state remains below 1.63 million main doses of the allocated COVID-19 vaccine.
“I would not consider April 10 to be anything other than my own personal protection and the personal protection of others,” added Vento. “If I’m not in public, I should probably be careful if I go to a place that already has 100% occupancy and I don’t know its ventilation system and people don’t wear masks, because we don’t have a large part of our population that has been vaccinated and is still at risk, although we have fewer cases and fewer viruses than, say, we had after Thanksgiving (and) after Christmas.
“The reality is that we still have the virus. We still have a continuous average of more than 500 days, and we still have – depending on the statistic you use – 4% or 8% … positivity of the test,” he continued. “Those were the numbers we had when we were in the blockade, so I know that we have changed a lot. Like, we accept a lot because people want to go back to work and want to have a normal life. The reality that we have in front of us is the reality that we have to address, not the reality we want it to be. We have to work towards that reality, so I would encourage people to continue to use these precautions until (more herd immunity is achieved). “
The adjusted term expiration date came just weeks after the Utah Department of Health announced the criteria for ending the state’s mask term. State officials said they would begin to gradually remove the mandate in low transmission counties after the state received just over 1.63 million allocated primary doses. A primary dose is considered the first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines, or the Johnson & Johnson single dose vaccine.
State health department officials said the 1.63 million primary dose target represents about 70% of Utah’s adult population. Health experts say that 70% to 90% of the herd’s immunity will likely need to be achieved to end the pandemic.
Although the state plans to make the vaccine eligible for all Utah adults on April 1, Cox’s team estimated this week that Utah would have about 1.5 million vaccines allocated by April 10, which falls by almost 70%.
Vento said there are still “a lot” of people hesitant to get the vaccine. This includes cultural, religious, access or mistrust barriers. Lt. Governor Deidre Henderson last week announced the new Utah vaccine “roadmap” to close some of the gaps, especially with regard to access.
“We will not reach 90% of those vaccinated. We still estimate 70% to 80% as our estimated collective immunity – most of which will be vaccine-induced collective immunity because we are not sure how long natural immunity will last,” said Vento.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new guidelines this week on when masks can be removed. The guidelines state that people who are fully vaccinated – having both injections of a double vaccine or the Johnson & Johnson vaccine – can meet indoors with other fully vaccinated people or meet indoors with unvaccinated people from another residence without a mask if the person is not or does not live with someone at increased risk for COVID-19.
The biggest concern, according to Vento, is that governments have relaxed and will continue to relax restrictions before better herd immunity is established. This not only creates the risk of further spread, but also the risk that the SARS-CoV-2 virus mutates in addition to the strains that vaccine manufacturers are already “really concerned about”.
“The more they transmit, the more they replicate,” he said. “The more they mutate, the more there is a chance of 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, encourages people to get the vaccine as soon as it becomes available.
Why does Utah have fewer confirmed variants?
Vento answered 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 could affect vaccination efforts.
This week, the state health department began reporting findings from three variants of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. Data updated Friday showed that 67 cases of the “United Kingdom” strain were found in Utah, with no confirmed cases of “South Africa” or “Brazil” strains. He listed 33 UK variant cases on Thursday.
The South African strain, officially called B.1.351, is the variant that led Moderna to start testing an updated vaccine to ensure that it protects people as efficiently as the primary strain that emerged in late 2019. .
So far, there is a lot of good data on much of the use of our therapies and also our vaccines that there should be responses to, but there are also some data that make us maintain this caution, especially with that strain from South Africa.
– Dr. Todd Vento, an infectious disease physician at Intermountain Healthcare
Vento said one of the reasons the number of variant cases in Utah is low is that the US has not tested the variants as much as other counties in the world, especially compared to Europe. This is at the top of some geographical division between the continents where the three major variants emerged.
Of course, there are other strains of the coronavirus. Vento said on Friday that there are known cases of what is known as the “California variant” in Utah and a few other variants. These strains are not currently reported in health department data and are not as well studied in terms of their impact on vaccination effectiveness.
He said he wanted to acknowledge the current facts about the variants in order to provide a full scope of the COVID-19 situation and not to provide a perspective that is “unfortunate and gloomy” or sugary.
“(It’s) just reality. RNA viruses mutate, and many of these mutations do nothing. Some of these mutations actually improve the virus’s fitness and make it easier for the virus to spread through the community,” he said. “So far, there is a lot of good data about much of the use of our therapies and also our vaccines that there should be answers to, but there is also some data that makes us maintain this caution, especially with this strain from South Africa.”
COVID-19 beyond the pandemic
Vento also talked about the possible future after COVID-19 is no longer a pandemic, and he said that the future could very well mean at least another “booster dose” vaccine.
Remember that the drug makers behind the vaccines have not yet completed their studies on vaccines. They have about eight to 10 months of data from 100,000 individuals that will help find out exactly how long the vaccine offers protection against the coronavirus, Vento said on Friday.
This means that it remains to be seen whether the vaccine is unique or whether it will become an annual flu-like vaccine. There is also a theory that another dose could help against new variants of COVID-19. While all of these are possibilities, there are still many unknowns.
What Vento warned on Friday is that people can “count on” the fact that the current vaccination effort will not be the end of the COVID-19 vaccines.
“I would wait, and I think people should expect that they need some kind 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 can find that we need ‘Modern-type 2’ as our next vaccine. These types of practices.”