Health officials Monday night shared a positive report of the state of the pandemic in Summit County, saying cases in schools remained low, the county has moved back to a safer transmission level and that the number of COVID-19 vaccinations, already high, continues to grow.
Health Director Phil Bondurant also laid out an ambitious timeline for youth vaccinations, saying children aged 5-11 could get both shots before Christmas if a tentative federal timeline holds.
“Generally speaking, things look really good,” he said during a Board of Health meeting held Monday.
As of Monday, the only school in Summit County that had more than four cases of COVID-19 was Ecker Hill Middle School, which reported nine. That equals 1.08% of the school’s population, according to data published by the Park City School District.
The county has issued public health orders covering elementary, middle and junior high schools. In those schools, masks would be required if 2% of a school’s population, including adults, tests positive for the virus in a two-week period.
Officials offered additional detail about why they haven’t sought a mask mandate covering grades K-12, indicating that an overly broad order, or one that isn’t supported by current data, could be struck down. And once that happens, officials would face challenges implementing other measures should the situation worsen.
“Once it’s canceled, generally speaking, the public health official cannot reinstitute the same order again during the same emergency,” said David Thomas, the county’s chief civil deputy attorney. “If your legislative body ends it, they’ve ended it.”
Board of Health members were briefed on how measures like mask mandates are put in place, with Thomas explaining that the County Council or state Legislature could at any time rescind local orders.
Bondurant described factors that influenced the creation of the orders, indicating they would need to be defensible in court, hew to the narrow parameters defined by the state Legislature and be responsive to current conditions.
“It’s when it’s too far-reaching is when we would run the risk of potentially having intervention from either the County Council or the legislative body,” he said. “… The fact that we don’t see broad sweeping mask orders in schools is an indication as to just how careful and how difficult this process can be if you’re not very strategic in how you apply these type of orders.”
Officials have opted to set a threshold for the number of cases that would trigger a mask mandate in schools in which at least some students are too young to receive a vaccine. They say it’s an attempt to slow an outbreak if one occurs. Bondurant said Monday that no outbreaks have been tied to schools this fall and that spread among younger people appears to be occurring in extracurricular settings.
Thomas, a former state legislator himself, said state officials have lauded the county’s process.
The conversation was one of the more robust public discussions from Board of Health members regarding the orders that the county health director, county manager and County Council have implemented. One Board of Health member noted the orders do not follow federal guidelines that masks be worn in all grades.
The meeting came amid positive case trends in Summit County and statewide, despite a recent local uptick Bondurant indicated could be related to how case data was reported.
The county has been placed in the moderate transmission level on a statewide index, an improvement from the high level that most Utah counties share. Only the state’s three least-populous counties are in the low transmission level.
The county’s adjusted number of COVID-19 cases over two weeks and the percentage of tests returning positive results prompted the reclassification.
Officials also said that more than 31,000 Summit County residents were fully vaccinated, one of the top marks on a percentage basis in the country.
And in what might be welcome news to some parents, Bondurant shared details about a federal timeline for the COVID-19 vaccine manufactured by Pfizer to be approved for emergency use in younger children. He anticipated that could happen in late October, though he noted the timing could easily shift, as it has previously. The current schedule would allow a full course of the vaccine, with its 28-day waiting period between shots, before students are dismissed for winter break.
He estimated there would be about 3,000 people in that age group seeking a vaccine and that the county would work with private and public partners to deliver those shots within 30 days starting around Halloween.
“I hope that our report next month at this time, that Nov. 1, is what we’ve done in day one to get vaccinations to children 5 to 11 years old,” Bondurant said.