Intermountain Health Care Infectious Disease Specialist Dr.Todd Vento said the state's seven-day average is more than 6,000 positive cases per day. He said they assume 95% of those cases are the omicron variant. He said omicron had forced delta out, and the trends now resemble how the delta variant progressed in September.
He said the constant data stream on COVID-19 can distract from the science of what they know about the illness. He said the public must understand what it can do to prevent the spread and the threat of severe illness or death from the virus.
"Masks prevent--a well fitted high-quality mask prevents transmitted disease. The more you gather, the more risk you are for a very highly transmissible variant. And the vaccine actually works to prevent severe infections, and the data bear that out. So, you're much more likely, you know, multiple times, even double-digit times likely, or highly likely to get a severe infection or death if you're unvaccinated. Therefore, just do those simple measures and don't worry about you know, what about this? What about that? Those things work and just implement those measures and if everyone does that, you know, that would really put a huge dent into our epi-curve and, you know, help our healthcare systems, you know, get through this period of the pandemic."
Utah's ICUs are full, and hospitals and urgent care centers have medical staffing challenges due to high infection rates in healthcare workers. He said the standard of care is not in a crisis phase, but hospitals cannot operate the way they've done prior to the pandemic.
"So, we've had at least a 300 number, plus or minus increase in our healthcare workers, with COVID, over the last three days. That puts us at around 1000 right now, and that's not affecting us in terms of number of procedures or our business operations per se--healthcare delivery. However, it does affect our staffing and how we move staff around and ask for volunteers to do additional staffing of shifts in Insta cares, urgent cares, etc."
The CDC recommends quarantining for five days if exposed. But Vento said most infection occurs early in the course of illness, generally in the 1-2 days before the onset of symptoms and the 2-3 days after.
People with COVID-19 should isolate for five days. If they are asymptomatic or their symptoms are resolving (without fever for 24 hours), follow that by five days of wearing a mask when around others to minimize the risk of infecting people they encounter.
He said the transmissibility of the new variant is so high it is causing problems despite the milder symptoms. The impacts on hospital care trickle down.
"We have so many folks who are at risk for severe COVID and hospitalization that it's actually stressed our outpatient staffing. And measures to try to get to people who have not been vaccinated, have a high risk for severe infection, hospitalization from COVID, and then want say monoclonal antibody therapy or new Pfizer oral antiviral therapy. So, we're shifting people from who normally work in an insta care, urgent care into monoclonal antibodies and rapid initiation of outpatient therapy. We have 115 positive COVID individuals in our ICU throughout the system right now and that is in itself extremely taxing. It's beyond where we would normally function."
He said scientists are trying to keep up with the constant stream of data coming in.
"And not having folks sort of anchor on, well, this is what happens with COVID. If we had had like a nickel for every time we said, well, here's how COVID behaves, and then we learn that it doesn't behave that way. We'd be rich because it has changed so much, and we're learning this is a virus we never did wasn't on the planet, you know, and say November 2019. And we've learned in you know, two-plus years. We have a vaccine we know how to prevent it."
Vento said even with the evolving understanding of omicron, the message is the same. Get the vaccine and the booster, wear a mask and avoid social gatherings.
