After Utah’s move to a yellow, low-risk level last month, the state has experienced a concerning spike in COVID-19 cases in the weeks since. With record numbers of new cases reported last weekend, Summit County officials are worried about this new trend.
Summit County Health Director Rich Bullough agrees in the general assumption that the surge in Utah’s positive COVID-19 cases is directly related to Governor Herbert’s decision to ease state-wide restrictions in May.
Bullough added that recent spikes in Summit County cases are not related to backups in testing or any other outlying circumstances.
“There’s been a pace to this opening that has been disconcerting coming from the state level," he said. "I think it has moved too fast and has not been done in a stepwise fashion so we’re left with spikes in cases and wondering exactly what the cause of that is in specific to opening the economy and businesses, etc. It’s hard for us to have answers to that because of the way this easing has occurred.”
State health officials have looked at the recent data and backed off initial speculations that Utah would move to a green risk level last Friday. The data will be re-evaluated this week but Bullough does not expect there to be any additional easing of restrictions given the recent increase in cases.
With data indicating that 57% of statewide cases come from people between the ages of 15-57, Bullough said that younger people who are headed back to work need to be particularly careful.
“I think part of that might be driven by the fact that we have focused so much on the fact that it is the older population with comorbid conditions who suffer negative outcomes," he said. "There may be a general overall view in the younger population that they’re not at risk.”
Bullough stressed that young people should continue social distancing and wear masks in public as they still could easily transmit the disease to more at-risk members of the population.
