SALT LAKE CITY – While there has been some growing pain in Utah’s aggressive effort to speed up the administration of the COVID-19 vaccine, the state has doubled the number of vaccines delivered in the past week.
A total of 133,202 vaccines were administered in the state, up from about 68,000 last week and an increase of 8,318 on Wednesday.
At the moment, the vaccine is open to first responders and health professionals; employees and residents of Utah’s long-term care facilities; and elementary and high school teachers and staff. On Monday, all Utahns aged 70 and over will start receiving doses.
“We can’t wait to expand this to larger populations and other groups,” Utah Governor Spencer Cox told a news conference on Thursday.
Thursday, the number of COVID-19 cases in Utah increased by 2,742, with an additional 11 deaths reported, according to the Utah Department of Health.
Utah Governor Spencer Cox spoke at a news conference on Thursday morning. Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson, Utah State Department of Health epidemiologist Dr. Angela Dunn, and executive director of the Governor’s Office of Economic Development, Dan Hemmert, also spoke at the event.
Watch the replay of the press conference below.
State working to remove barriers to vaccine administration
After Cox introduced a series of new requirements last week for health districts and facilities that administer vaccines, the state is still correcting the problems. Utah received about 33,000 vaccines a week from the federal government, according to the governor.
An executive order enacted by Cox last week requires health districts to use all of their weekly vaccine allocation, or their extra doses will be used elsewhere and their allocation may be reduced. Establishments that administer vaccines must also report how many vaccines they have administered in the previous 24 hours by 7 am each day.
But health districts have experienced some setbacks to meet these new requirements. Some districts lack the personnel, technology or financial resources to make Cox’s order a reality, according to Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson.
Salt Lake County struggled with its rollout on Wednesday as people aged 70 and older who were trying to make an appointment for vaccinations had problems with the county’s registration website. Later on Wednesday night, some people who signed up for an appointment received a false cancellation notice – although no appointments were canceled.
Henderson started visiting each of Utah’s health districts this week to help them with the implementation of vaccine administration. So far, she has visited Blanding, Vernal, Logan, Richfield and Cedar City.
One district, which Henderson declined to name, resorted to having nurses themselves enter the vaccine data at the end of the day, so that the district could meet the daily 7 am deadline to report vaccine numbers to the state, she said.
This is a personal problem that the state will try to fix, Henderson said. Nurses, who have a specialized skill set, need to focus on administering the vaccine, she said. They should not be tasked with entering data; the state should be able to provide the health districts with staff for this, added Henderson. State officials previously noted that as Utah hospitals became more burdened with cases of COVID-19, there was a high rate of burnout among healthcare professionals.
Cox also said that health districts are not used to having unlimited resources. Rural districts, in particular, are hesitant to spend extra money on additional resources, such as spending to rent space to serve as a vaccine administration clinic. The districts were instructed not to hesitate or wait for things like this, but instead to spend the money and send the bill to the state, the governor said.
Cox noted that, despite initial hiccups, health districts have been administering vaccines at a rate that allowed the number of vaccine doses administered in the state to double last week.
“We feel much better today than we did two weeks ago,” he said.
Even though the Salt Lake County rollout started out rough, the county scored more than 30,000 vaccination markings for people aged 70 and over – using all of its allocation to that population by the end of February, Cox said.
Henderson also praised the work of the state’s 13 health districts.
“Our health departments are doing an incredible job. Their efforts are enormous,” she said.
New COVID-19 cases
The health department now estimates that there are 55,371 active cases of COVID-19 in Utah. The average number of positive cases per day for seven days is now 2,575, according to the health department. The positive test rate per day for that time period is now 26%, down from 32.7% last week, according to state epidemiologist Dr. Angela Dunn.
Dunn said the state is no longer seeing an increase in the number of holiday-related cases after the Christmas period.
“It is so promising,” she said. “We need to continue to slow down the spread of COVID.”
She noted that hospitals are still full, so people need to continue to distance themselves socially, wearing masks and practicing good hygiene to prevent spread.
Thursday’s new case numbers indicate a 0.9% increase in positive cases since Wednesday. Of the 1,871,616 people tested for COVID-19 in Utah so far, 17% tested positive for COVID-19. The total number of tests performed increased by 18,155 on Thursday, and 16,231 of them were tests from people who had not taken the previous test for COVID-19.
Cox and Dunn acknowledged that the state’s efforts to increase testing, which were announced in early August, have not been as planned so far. They blamed the federal government for not delivering the promised test units and for a slower development process for rapid antigen testing than anticipated.
However, the state has finally managed to increase testing significantly in recent weeks, Dunn said. Thirty-three communities in Utah were flooded with rapid test units, and as a result, the state was able to test thousands of people in those communities.
“This effort has definitely slowed the spread,” said Dunn.
There are 559 COVID-19 patients currently hospitalized in Utah, including 194 in intensive care, state data show. About 94% of all beds in intensive care units in Utah are occupied on Thursday, including 97% of the ICU beds in the state’s 16 referral hospitals. About 54% of Utah’s non-ICU hospital beds are occupied Thursday, according to the health department.
The 11 deaths reported on Thursday include:
- A man from Davis County who was between 45 and 64 years old and was hospitalized when he died
- A man from Kane County who was between 65 and 84 years old and was hospitalized when he died
- An Iron County man who was between 65 and 84 years old and was hospitalized when he died
- A man from Utah County who was over 85 and was hospitalized when he died
- A Utah county man who was aged 65 to 84 and was a resident of a long-term care facility
- A man from Washington County who was between 65 and 84 years old and was hospitalized when he died
- Two men from Weber County between the ages of 65 and 84 and were hospitalized when they died
- A woman from Salt Lake County who was between 65 and 84 years old and was not hospitalized when she died
- Salt Lake County woman aged 65 to 84 who was hospitalized when she died
- A woman from Washington County who was 65 to 84 years old and was hospitalized when she died
Thursday’s totals give Utah 317,559 confirmed cases, with 12,249 hospitalizations and 1,460 deaths from the disease. A total of 260,728 Utah COVID-19 cases are now estimated to be recovered, according to the health department.
New round of PPP financing available
Utah’s small businesses that were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic now have the opportunity to enroll in a new round of the Payment Check Protection Program through the federal government.
Companies with just one employee can apply and qualify for funding, even if they received money from a previous round of PPP allocations at the start of the pandemic, according to the executive director of the Governor’s Economic Development Office, Dan Hemmert. All small businesses are encouraged to apply, he said.
If companies have a financial partner, those partners can help with the application process, said Hemmert. The state website can also provide more information on how to apply via coronavirus.utah.gov/business.
Methodology:
The test results now include data from PCR tests and antigen tests. Positive results from the COVID-19 test are reported to the health department immediately after they are confirmed, but negative test results can take 24 to 72 hours.
The total number of cases reported by the Utah Department of Health each day includes all cases of COVID-19 since the beginning of the Utah outbreak, including those who are infected, those who have recovered from the disease and those who have died.
Recovered cases are defined as anyone who has been diagnosed with COVID-19 three or more weeks ago and has not died.
Referral hospitals are Utah’s 16 hospitals capable of providing the best COVID-19 healthcare.
Deaths reported by the state typically occurred two to seven days before they were reported, according to the health department. Some deaths can be even older, especially if the person is from Utah, but died in another state.
The health department reports deaths from confirmed and probable COVID-19 cases according to the case definition outlined by the State Council and Territorial Epidemiologists. Death counts are subject to change as case investigations are completed.
For deaths reported as deaths from COVID-19, the person would not have died if they did not have COVID-19, according to the health department.
The data included in this story mainly reflects the state of Utah as a whole. For more localized data, visit your local health district’s website.
More information about Utah’s health guidance levels is available at coronavirus.utah.gov/utah-health-guidance-levels.
The information is from the Utah Department of Health and coronavirus.utah.gov/case-counts. For more information on how the Utah Department of Health compiles and reports COVID-19 data, visit coronavirus.utah.gov/case-counts and scroll down to the “Data Notes” section at the bottom of the page.
Jacob Klopfenstein