Summit County is one of five areas in Utah that remains at the moderate risk level. Summit County officials explained why that is and when the area may follow suit with the rest of the state.
Last week, Governor Gary Herbert announced the large majority of Utah would see a reduction of restrictions related to COVID-19 as the state moved from moderate to low risk. Included in the minority of areas remaining in moderate risk was Summit County.
Although the county continues to add about two cases of COVID-19 a day, Summit County Health Director Rich Bullough reports they are encouraged by trends in the county.
“Our R0 value which again for folks who may not be familiar with that, it's an estimate of the number of people that are infected by one individual with COVID-19,” Bullough explained. “A value of one means that things are flat, if it's greater than one it means incidence rates new cases are growing, if it's less than one it's on the decline. Ours this morning was 0.33, which is really encouraging.”
Bullough says although data is positive, the county petitioned the governor’s office for an extra week in the moderate Orange-color coded risk factor.
“We did not have the data because of the incubation period of this disease,” Bullough continued. “We felt that it was a little hasty to go to yellow when we had not fully assessed the impact of going from to red to orange. As this week goes on with each day we're getting more data and the data continue to look good.”
Summit County Council member Roger Armstrong added he suspects Summit County will move to yellow by the end of the week.
“To be really clear, this is a one-week extension that the governor's office gave us. Based on the numbers that you just articulated, in terms of R0 and the number of cases bumping along the same place,” Armstrong said. “I suspect it's going to be a hard argument to make, unless something crazy happens during the rest of the week, to keep us in orange at the end of this week.”
Neighboring Wasatch County as well as Grand County, Salt Lake City and West Valley City are the only areas in the state still in the moderate risk level. Those areas will also be reassessed by the state this week.
More info on what the phases mean can be found here.
