It's been a year since COVID first arrived in Summit County. Officials put measures in place early and looking back, the head of the county’s health department feels good about having made the right moves to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.
Summit County Public Health Director Rich Bullough uses data to measure his team's success over the past year. With the Utah statewide mask mandate ending on April 10, he doesn't regret the shutdowns, the masking requirements, and the social distancing restrictions put in place at the beginning and throughout the pandemic crisis.
"If we look at mortality rate, case fatality rate, certainly we can't take all of the credit for that,” he said. “We have a healthy population, we've got, you know, a relatively well-to-do population, a great medical system, but our case fatality rate is extraordinarily low in Summit County. To put it in perspective, every state surrounding Utah has case fatality rates of over 100 per 100,000. The lowest in the country is 31 per 100,000. The state of Utah is at 62, and Summit County is a 24."
The first case identified in Summit County was an employee who worked at a popular Park City Main Street bar. Bullough said he had to close the business down because hundreds of people could have been infected within ten days when the employee had last worked.
"So, we released that name, that business name, in an effort to have people reach out to us and say I was there, and in fact, that was very successful,” he said. “We had a lot of people contact us, and it allowed us to move down that chain of investigation and help mitigate the spread."
Bullough said nationally, 10% of new COVID-19 cases are variants. Data on the level of protection the vaccines provide against the new variants is scant.
“There is some evidence to suggest that they're not real protective of the variant from Brazil and South Africa,” he said. “So, it brings an important point forward. We still need to be careful. It is true that cases are dropping. We're getting people vaccinated, we've got a fair number of people estimated to be somewhere in the ballpark of 20% of the population has already had COVID, but we don't know really what these variants are going to do moving forward."
Bullough said Summit County is filling vaccine appointments quickly, which isn't the case throughout the state. He is pleased with the progress the health department is making to vaccinate high-risk populations and people over 65. He expects that about 95% of them will be vaccinated soon.
"The big question for us is, are those individuals who chose not to be vaccinated or have we missed people,” he said. “It could also be the fact that those people aren't in the county. You know they're counted as residents, but they may not be here."
His department is now focused on finding ways to expand access, remove barriers and make it easier for people to get the vaccine.
The Centers for Disease Control guidelines recommend people who had COVID wait 90 days before being vaccinated. Vaccine reactions seem to happen more often among younger people.
"By far, the majority of people don't have any reaction to that first dose, maybe a little bit of a sore arm,” he said. “It's the second dose where you see a little higher frequency of, you know, aches and pains and chills."
Bullough said the data suggest strongly that the second dose should not be skipped but said studies are ongoing to determine differently.
With Utah's mask mandate ending on April 10, Governor Spencer Cox announced all adults would be able to sign up for a vaccine on April 1.
