State leaders are looking forward to the gradual reopening of some regular activities, but the timeline and the amount of normal return will be driven by case rates of COVID-19.
Utah legislative leaders are eyeing a gradual re-opening of the economy. State epidemiologist Dr. Angela Dunn says that Utah is planning to develop and carefully monitor a staged approach to re-opening the economy.
“When we open a little bit of the economy, how does the pandemic react in Utah,” Dunn said. “So that if we need to make it more strict, we can move back. or if we can loosen up even further, we can do that. So, we are making a Utah specific plan that should be announced in the coming days.”
Dunn says in order to avoid undoing the previous months work, they have to be diligent at reading data as it comes in and remain flexible.
“In the event that we are identifying additional cases or start to see a surge on our health care capacity, we can quickly implement those social distancing restrictions again,” Dunn explained. “To ensure that we can save our hospital systems as well as keeping Utahns safe.”
Dunn says they’ve seen a slowing of the growth rate, which is hopeful, but they need a couple of weeks of progress until they can make assumptions about the trend.
“What we're looking for is a slowing of the growth rate for at least two weeks,” Dunn continued. “So that's one incubation period and then after that what we would see to confirm that we have flattened it, is an actual drop in our cases. We are seeing an additional increase in cases every day however that growth rate has been slowing over the past several days. So, the signs are good, but I think we still have to wait a little bit longer before we can have good confidence in that.”
Dunn says the state has unmet testing capacity meaning they are encouraging more people to be tested. This week the state has emphasized that anyone with a single symptom should be tested. Those symptoms include a sore throat, muscle aches and pains, a decreased sense of taste or smell, shortness of breath, fever or cough.
