On April 10 the law to lift the mask mandate will go into effect and many folks are wondering what this means for our area. Castle Country Radio was able to sit down with Southeast Utah Health Department Director, Brady Bradford to discuss the mask mandate.
“Well it’s a fairly arbitrary date for most of us it doesn’t mean much. Businesses still have the option of keeping mask mandate, their own personal mask requirement in place and that will happen in many occasions. We ask people to respect that. In other situations that won’t be required particularly outdoors,” said Bradford. However, the mask requirement pertains to a gathering of 50 or more people as they are unable to physically distance.
There are three numbers that the state has been watching in order to issue the April 10 date as Bradford explains, “So the first number was we needed a case rate of less than a 191 per 100,000 people and that’s over 14 days, right now we’re at about 175 – so we’ve met that requirement. The second metric was ICU utilization for COVID related purposes only and it needed to be below 15 percent and that’s at about 7 percent right now. The third metric for lifting all mask-related and other order related to COVID was we needed 1.6 million first doses or prime doses of COVID to be allocated to Utah and we’re just about 1 million right now, that will take a few more weeks to get to.” In looking at the numbers you can see that things are moving in the right direction.
If you are interested in getting the COVID vaccination you can do so without an appointment. “Starting now on our clinic days we are accepting walk-ins. We will be at the fairgrounds this week. If you just haven’t felt comfortable on the computer or haven’t been able to make an appointment for whatever reason and you want a shot, we encourage you to come down, we’re there between 9:00 am to 2:00 pm on both Wednesday and Thursday. Eventually, we’ll move to a, probably in May a situation where we’ll have that available every day,” stated Bradford. Right now, its best for SEUHD to offer a twice a week clinic for those that would like to obtain the vaccination.
To learn more about the COVID vaccination please visit the Southeast Utah Health Department website at https://www.seuhealth.com/