ST. GEORGE — On a day of grim milestones involving deaths from COVID-19, there was still hope provided by Thanksgiving numbers that aren’t as bad as what was expected and the news that the first people to take an approved vaccine in Southern Utah will do so as soon as Monday or Tuesday.
The governor also announced Thursday that K-12 teachers and long-term care center residents and staff are being moved up in line to receive the vaccine as early as the end of the month.
“It’s not nearly the surge we were expecting post-Thanksgiving,” State Epidemiologist Dr. Angela Dunn said.
Dunn said the Utah Department of Health was expecting above 5,000 new infections per day of the virus. However, the department announced 3,401 new infections statewide Thursday.
“What we need to do as a public is make sure there’s still not another surge after Christmas,” Dunn said. “Keeping activities within the household will help us out a lot.”
The Thanksgiving infections are coming in just now as because of the five- to 14-day gestation period of the virus, it takes as long for it to show up in the statistics.
For the second-straight day, there were 278 new infections in Southern Utah. Privately, local health officials had said last week that they expected the daily total here to go above 400 per day.
Gov. Gary Herbert said the bad, but not really bad, numbers are a sign that Utahns heeded the advice to stick within their households for the Thanksgiving holiday.
“We were bracing for a surge but the good news is it didn’t happen,” Herbert said. “We appreciate the fact that many people took that counsel. Still too many but much less than we expected.”
That positive news was tempered by Utah passing its 1,000th death since the virus first reached the state in March.
The new deaths reported Thursday included two in Iron County, increasing the number of deaths there by 25% since the start of the pandemic. It has been the deadliest four-day stretch of the pandemic in Southern Utah, with 11 local deaths since Monday.
The state, as a whole, has seen 77 deaths in the same stretch in the deadliest week of the pandemic statewide. It is now at the point where there are more of the deceased than the Utah Office of the Medical Examiner can handle, and the state coroner is now utilizing refrigerated trucks to handle the backlog.
“Our medical examiner’s office is starting to feel the strain,” Dunn said.
The 1,016 people who have died of COVID-19 in Utah are only 0.5% of the 225,946 positive tests in Utah, which has maintained the sixth-lowest death rate in the nation among states.
However, Utah has recently had days where the number of those who have died of COVID-19 rank up with the death toll from the worst disasters in state history. For the first time, in recent days, COVID-19 has been the leading cause of death in the state ahead of heart disease.
The story is similar nationwide, as Wednesday and Thursday’s COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. marked the fourth- and fifth- deadliest one-day death tolls in American history – ahead of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and the 9/11 attacks and trailing only two hurricanes and the Battle of Antietam in the Civil War.
Herbert has said in the past, the low percentage of those who die of COVID-19 don’t discount that these are “real people, grandparents, parents, children.”
“COVID-19 is up there with heart disease for people’s life being shortened. And we mourn that a lot of these deaths could be prevented,” Herbert said Thursday. “Like seat belts could help prevent loss of life in accidents, wearing a mask could prevent deaths from COVID-19.”
First vaccines in Southern Utah early next week
A Federal Drug Administration committee recommended the emergency approval of a COVID-19 vaccine by Pfizer on Thursday, with final approval expected by Sunday.
Herbert said he spoke with Gen. Gus Perna, who heads the federal “Operation Warp Speed” vaccine effort and was assured that as soon as the vaccine is approved, it will be arriving at four Utah hospitals, including Dixie Regional Medical Center.
Frontline workers at Dixie Regional who handle COVID-19 patients will be the first to get the vaccine as soon as Tuesday in a phased approach to allow minimum lost time for doctors, nurses and other staff because of brief side effects seen within 48 hours of taking the vaccine.
In trials, the vaccine has come with two days of fever and other side effects caused by an immune system going into overdrive. The vaccine has not had any long-term side effects, though the initial release of the vaccine a week ago in the United Kingdom has shown an allergic reaction in two people with severe allergies, according to media reports.
The first doses will be limited to the frontline medical workers. However, on Thursday long-term care facility staff and patients were moved next in line, followed by K-12 teachers. The second group of those receiving doses, which will also include medical workers outside those in the initial phase, will begin receiving the vaccine by the end of the month through January.
First responders like police officers and firefighters, who had been in the second group to receive the vaccine, have now been bumped to the third group.
The rate of producing and distributing the vaccine will start small, but grow quickly state health officials. But a hitch in those plans is that the state will initially be receiving fewer doses of the vaccine than had been expected.
Utah was slated to receive 400,000 initial doses of the vaccine, but that has been reduced to 154,000 in December and another 154,000 in January.
Media reports said the problem is on the federal side after the White House declined an offer by Pfiser to get a larger allotment of the vaccine, allowing nations like the United Kingdom to be first in line to receive more doses.
“A part of it is we don’t know what’s happened in Washington,” Herbert said of the smaller allotment to Utah.
Rick Lakin, the immunization program manager for the Utah Department of Health, said 20,300 doses will arrive at Dixie Regional Medical Center within 24 hours of the vaccine’s approval, and an additional 20,400 doses a week later.
With just weeks remaining in Herbert’s administration, the main thrust of vaccine distribution in the state will fall on Spencer Cox, who will be inaugurated as Utah’s 18th governor at Ivins City’s Tuacahn Amphitheater on Jan. 4.
And Cox said vaccine distribution will be a priority for him.
“As an incoming administration, our number one priority, our number two priority, our number three priority is vaccine distribution,” Cox said. “We don’t want this vaccine to be sitting on shelves.”
As studies have shown that being infected doesn’t create as many antibodies as the vaccine will, Dunn said the only path to ending the COVID-19 pandemic is getting a large part of the population vaccinated.
“We need between 60-80%,” Dunn said. “We’re relying on a large percentage of the Utah population to get vaccinated so we could return to life as normal as soon as possible.”
COVID-19 information resources
St. George News has made every effort to ensure the information in this story is accurate at the time it was written. However, as the situation and science surrounding the coronavirus continues to evolve, it’s possible that some data has changed.
Check the resources below for up-to-date information and resources.
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
- World Health Organization
- Utah Department of Health
- Safe Southern Utah
- Información sobre coronavirus en español
- To file complaint about non-compliance with mask mandate
- Intermountain Healthcare
- To Donate and Volunteer to Help
Southern Utah coronavirus count (as of Dec. 10, 2020, seven-day average in parentheses)
Positive COVID-19 tests: 14,694 (259.8 new infections per day in seven days, falling since Dec. 9)
- Washington County: 11,546 (187.6 per day, falling)
- Iron County: 2,416 (55.3 per day, falling)
- Kane County: 253 (8.6 per day, rising)
- Garfield County: 257 (1.7 per day, rising)
- Beaver County: 222 (6.7 per day, rising)
New infections for major Southern Utah cities (numbers released ahead of Southern Utah numbers):
- St. George: 111 (falling)
- Washington City: 26 (falling)
- Hurricane/LaVerkin: 52 (rising)
- Ivins City/Santa Clara: 16 (falling)
- Cedar City: 50 (rising)
Deaths: 107 (1.7 per day, rising)
- Washington County: 88
- Iron County: 10 (2 new: Hospitalized male 65-84, long-term care female over 85)
- Garfield County: 6
- Kane County: 1
- Beaver County: 2
Hospitalized: 45 (falling)
Active cases: 4,374 (falling)
Current Utah seven-day average: 2,816 (falling)
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