The Southeastern Utah Health Department (SEUHD) stopped by Castle Country Radio to talk about COVID, transition phase and their new location.
The COVID numbers are looking better for the region which includes Carbon, Emery and Grand counties. “Over the last week we had about 45ish cases total, we had 30-33 in Carbon County, I think 6 in Emery and 5 in Grand County, something like that. From a numbers perspective its significantly better than we’ve seen in quite some time,” stated Director Brady Bradford. Although, numbers are small in the area there still is some vulnerable individuals that require hospitalizations.
The metric system that was used to determine the transmission rate is no longer in use and officials are letting the numbers speak for themselves. “Those metrics served a purpose they don’t’ really mean as much anymore now that most of our cases that are positive, they’re not noticing a whole lot of symptoms because many of them are vaccinated and so its just kind of a run of the mill disease at this point. Testing patterns have changed, and reporting changed and so those metrics really aren’t as meaningful as they use to be,” said Bradford. Residents who are interested in seeing where the COVID numbers are sitting can visit the Southeastern Utah Health Department website.
State of Utah Governor Spencer Cox announced that March 31 would be a transition phase for the entire state. “Well from a state resource perspective I know that’s where they’re targeting to really pull back on some of their mobile testing, and mobile vaccination clinics and such. In reality locally, it will mean that for many people, just like they would normally go to their doctor when they’re sick with another illness, that’s probably where they will get tested. So testing resources won’t be quite as widely available but vaccines will still be available,” stated Bradford. Basically, most of the mobile resources will be scaled back and things will slowly get back to some normalcy.
The SEUHD is happy to report that they are now in their new location and are now settled in. “We’re just across the street in the old Seventh District Courthouse building, as well as the old Planning & Zoning building, we took up two spaces there but the main entrance is the old Seventh District Courthouse. We were able to gut that interior and remodel it completely, it looks great,” explained Bradford. This will allow for the department to have more space for their employees to better serve the community.