SALT LAKE CITY – Utah’s newest public health order has extended the statewide mandate to use masks to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, offering a better view on one of the hottest questions that have been asked for months during the AIDS pandemic. COVID-19: When can we take off the masks?
Although no specific date has been set in writing, the Utah Department of Health on Tuesday provided an important reference that would trigger the process of lifting mask mandates.
We now know that counties with “low” transmission rates will no longer have state requirements eight weeks after the state receives just over 1.63 million first – also known as “prime” – allocated doses of the COVID-19 vaccine.
A primary dose is currently the first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines, but is set to also include the Johnson & Johnson single dose vaccine which is in the final approval phase of the Food and Drug Administration.
Why 1.63 million?
The exact number to start the process of lifting the mask’s mandate is not absolutely arbitrary. The figure represents 70% of Utah’s adult population, said Tom Hudachko, a spokesman for the Utah Department of Health.
As noted by the Cleveland Clinic, it is expected that about 50% to 80% of the population will need to be vaccinated to achieve collective immunity. The New York Times reported that some public health experts put the range between 70% and 90%. Seventy percent was also an estimated number at the beginning of the pandemic.
There are also early signs that all 1.63 million doses of the primary vaccine would be administered once the allocated number is reached. Most of the two age groups in the state health department data who have had access to the COVID-19 vaccine for more than a month have already received at least one dose. The data show that 71% of Utahns aged 70 to 79 years and 69% of Utahns aged 80 and over received a primary vaccine.
When will we reach 1.63 million?
There are still many vaccines that need to be allocated to Utah to reach 1,633,000.
The health department reported Tuesday that the state had 444,905 first doses allocated with more than 410,000 Utahns receiving at least the first dose of the vaccine.
This means that more than 90% of the first dose vaccines allocated so far have already ended up in the arms of the Utahns (again, showing the vaccine’s popularity so far), but it also means that the department, by its own numbers, on Tuesday it had about 27% towards what it would take to reach 1.63 million.
The good news is that more vaccines have been delivered in the past few weeks than in the first few weeks after they were made available. The bad news is that the number of vaccines allocated to states has been fluid since the beginning and remains so, making it difficult to project an exact answer on when Utah will reach a certain number.
This fluidity was the basis of a New York Times data model that analyzed the country’s overall vaccination process. He found that at its current rate of 1.7 million vaccines per day, the United States would achieve immunity to the vaccine in November, but achieved full immunity – the number of people vaccinated plus the number of people who became immune after recovering. disease – in June.
If it were accelerated to up to 3 million vaccines a day as a result of an “increased supply”, then total immunity could be achieved as early as May, with vaccine immunity reaching 70% in July.
Still, there are some rough estimates of when Utah could reach 1.63 million.
On February 4, Governor Spencer Cox said projections for the Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson vaccines indicated about 130,000 primary doses allocated to Utah in early March. If that total was starting in the week of February 28 to March 6 and nothing changed, it would take about nine weeks to exceed 1.63 million. The ninth week in this scenario is the week from April 25th to May 1st.
Cox added that the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is expected to be approved by the FDA in the coming weeks, could result in tens of thousands of additional primary vaccines every week, starting in early April. The addition of a fourth vaccine would also speed up the process and could advance that date earlier based on what was said a few weeks ago.
But again, the numbers have been fluid and the predicted dose totals have changed since then. Officially, the Utah Department of Health still estimates that 1.63 million main doses allocated will be reached “later this spring”. This is when a primary dose is expected to be allocated to about 70% of all Utahns currently eligible for the vaccine.
In an email, Hudachko told KSL.com on Wednesday that the new figures presented by Congress this week indicate that “it certainly looks possible” that the state could reach 1.63 million main doses allocated in the first week of May.
If so, it bodes well for the state’s efforts to ensure that all adults in Utah who want a vaccine have access to one in late spring. It also gives enough time for the allocated doses to end up in the Utahns’ arms in the weeks after the 1.63 million allocation mark is reached.
When will the masks come out?
OK, back to the new stipulation in the health order that went into effect on Tuesday.
If Utah had that 1.63 million doses on Tuesday, when the benchmark was announced, counties with low transmission rates could then ease the mandate as early as April 20.
If the state reaches 1.63 million major doses allocated in early May, then it is possible that some Utah counties may be exempt from applying the mask in late June. In fact, if the health department started the clock on May 3, the term would end on June 28 for some areas.
That could explain Cox’s comment on Tuesday, where he tweeted: “I really believe that we will be celebrating without mask in large groups until the 4th (if not before).”
There is a second component to the question “when can the masks be removed?” and this revolves around case trends, based on the current order of integrity. If the order had taken effect immediately, only five counties in Utah would be affected. That’s because Daggett, Garfield, Piute, Rich and Wayne counties are currently the only counties in the state in the “low-level” category.
A county must meet at least two of these criteria to achieve “low” transmission:
- A countywide “test on test” positivity rate below 5%
- A 14-day case rate of less than 101 per 100,000 people
- Average bed utilization in an intensive care unit across the state for seven days below 69% and ICU COVID-19 utilization rate at an average state level below 6%
This is where the administration of allocated vaccines still comes into play. At the same time, COVID-19 trends are starting to lean in the right direction. The statewide seven-day moving average for new cases of COVID-19 has dropped 56% in the last four weeks – from January 25 to Monday – based on data obtained on Tuesday. ICU utilization at all hospitals in the state dropped to 69% on Tuesday; about 18% of these ICU needs were linked to COVID-19.
In order for these downward trends to continue in the coming weeks, health experts advise, and the health care order requires Utahns to wear their masks in all public areas inside and out, to physically distance themselves from other families and to wash their hands well.
The masks will be removed only when the appropriate number of required vaccines has been allocated and the trends in COVID-19 cases remain low.