Han Kim, a professor of public health at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, said the situation in Utah is likely to get worse before it gets better, especially since the state has the nation’s youngest population and the vaccines are not yet approved for those under 12. The same goes for everyone in K-12 schools.ĬDC: Fully vaccinated and everyone in K-12 schools should be maskedīut in Utah, state lawmakers lifted the statewide mask mandate in April and passed new laws limiting the power of other entities to impose COVID-19 restrictions, including mask mandates in schools, a situation that leaders of the GOP-controlled Legislature have made clear isn’t likely to change despite the latest surge. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently reversed a previous recommendation that the fully vaccinated no longer need to wear face masks, saying now that all Americans in COVID-19 hot spots should mask up in public regardless of their vaccination status. Later, the state health department released a “strongly recommended” list of “layered prevention strategies” for K-12 schools, including wearing a mask when indoors, social distancing, good hygiene and encouraging vaccinations. Of course, we’re always watching how the virus and the pandemic are evolving, but at this point have not changed our guidance regarding masks for these two populations (vaccinated and unvaccinated),” state health department spokesman Charla Haley said. “We recommend unvaccinated people choose to wear masks in indoor settings.

The state health department’s advice is less sweeping.

“We need to make sure we’re wearing masks in indoors spaces and around other people whose vaccination status we do not know.” “We know that with the delta variant produces higher viral load in vaccinated people and therefore making them more contagious than other variants did,” Moreno said. “We need to normalize wearing face coverings again,” Salt Lake County Health Department spokesman Gabe Moreno said Monday, shortly before the Utah Department of Health reported 2,244 new COVID-19 cases and 15 additional deaths from the virus since Friday.

With Utah’s surge in COVID-19 cases sparked by the highly contagious delta variant not expected to slow until this fall, public health officials are calling on Utahns to mask up in addition to making sure they are fully vaccinated against the deadly virus.

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