The Southeast Utah health Department Director Brady Bradford took time to speak over the telephone with Castle Country Radio about the latest COVID news taking place in our area.
Although we are in high transmission, officials are hoping to get moved to the medium transmission phase soon. “What we’ve messaged to people that we are headed in the right direction. Let’s not give up yet because as we recently saw Carbon County was in the medium transmission phase, and went back up to high, so that can happen, its’ not the end of the world but its just an indicator that there is still stuff going on even with these good indicators happening,” said Bradford. Carbon just made the cut for medium transmission then some tests came back in which jumped us back up to high transmission. Officials are currently reevaluating the situation which could move us into medium transmission level within in the next day or two.
Our numbers are vastly down from November, December, and January. “We have kind of plateaued a little higher than we want, we still would like to dip down a little bit we’re running about 10 cases a day, 10-12 between the three counties. We hope to be 5-6 cases a day so we are still a little bit higher than we want. We’ve seen a few cases come through our school districts still due to some tournaments that happened and things like that,” said Bradford. As a whole it’s very encouraging particularly as officials combined it with vaccinations taking place around the community.
Currently, individuals 50 years old and older are eligible to receive the vaccination in the area, along with those 18 years or older with underlying conditions approved by the State of Utah. “So far it’s been going really well the problem from the get go it’s just been not able to get enough vaccine to satisfy the demand and that looks to be the case for another month and half or two months. For people able to get an appointment we’ve been able to get them in and out very quickly. There are a few kinds of side effects so to speak of that vaccine working on you,” stated Bradford. The local health department is not the only place to get the vaccine, you can also schedule an appointment with Walmart and Smith’s Pharmacies.