As health departments across the state prepare to offer the COVID vaccine to all residents over age 70, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox announced Thursday that in the past week, the state has doubled the total number of doses of the vaccine that have been distributed.
“Today we have administered 133,202 doses,” Cox said. “Now that is really significant because if you compare it to where we were one week ago, we were at 68,030. So in the course of one week, we basically doubled the amount of vaccines that we have administered.”
Cox said as the state begins offering the vaccine to more and more residents, one of the most important steps will be ensuring local health departments have all the resources they need for success. Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson has been visiting the local health departments to learn more about the needed resources.
“Some of the barriers that we're seeing out there that are prohibiting some of this or making it difficult are personnel issues, technology issues, and funding issues,” Henderson said. “And so we are working nonstop to try to make sure that we are eliminating those barriers for our local health departments.”
While the Federal Government has recommended that states start vaccinating people over age 65, Cox said the next population to receive the vaccine in Utah will still be residents 70 and older because the demand is so high. In the next few months, those over 65 and with other comorbidities should be able to receive the vaccine.
“If you look at the deaths that have occurred here in the state of Utah,” Cox said, “ if you take those who are 70 years of age and older, and those who are in our long term care facilities, that comprises 73% of the deaths in our state.”
During the press conference on Thursday, State Epidemiologist, Dr. Angela Dunn announced that the day rolling average for case counts is down from 2,952 cases last week to 2,075 cases this week. The Percent positivity rate has also dropped from 32.7% to 26%.
