COVID-19 in Utah, continued: The vaccine and the variants

This stage of the COVID-19 pandemic has been described as “a race between the vaccine and the variants.”

On the one hand, the vaccines — the double-shot versions by Pfizer and Moderna, and the single-shot Johnson & Johnson variety, back this week after a “pause” ordered by federal officials because of a rare side effect of blood clots — are more widely available than ever.

On the other hand, variants of the virus — first tracked in the United Kingdom, California, South Africa and Brazil, among other places — are making the disease more slippery, spreading faster than before.

In Utah, Gov. Spencer Cox this week noted that the state has hit “a clear plateau” in what had been a declining level of case counts. Also in April, Cox has also touted the fact that more people in Utah’s ethnic minority communities have been receiving the vaccine than ever before, though statistically those groups are still lagging behind the rest of the state. (I talked to members of some of those groups in mid-March.)

My Salt Lake Tribune colleagues and I have been covering all of this — you should really check out our work — as we have passed into what Utah legislators called the “endgame.”

The first noticeable change brought by the Utah Legislature was that on April 10, the statewide order that said people should wear face masks in indoor public places was lifted. Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall kept a citywide mask mandate in place, though. So did a good many private businesses and organizations, which health experts said was still a good idea. And public schools will keep their mask rules in place to the end of the school year.

Here’s what else I’ve written about COVID-19 in the last few weeks:

• The first clinical trials to figure out how to give the COVID-19 vaccine to kids have started, some of them in Utah. I talked to one Utah family whose children were eager to be the first kids in Utah to get the shots.

• On the other end of the age spectrum, the proliferation of the vaccine among Utah’s elderly population has meant many nursing homes and long-term care facilities have been allowed to loosen their restrictions on contact with loved ones.

• Research into COVID-19 continued in Utah: A study that found that one’s blood type doesn’t change how likely they are to catch the virus; another explored the link between COVID-19 and a particular form of stroke; and another found teens and young adults more likely to catch the coronavirus than older adults, a contradiction to earlier wisdom. Meanwhile, doctors also warned that mental health issues were becoming a “second pandemic” during the year of COVID-19.

• Utahns told us what side effects they felt after getting the first dose and second dose of the vaccine.

• The Eccles Theater announced its plans to reopen. So did the Salt Lake City public library system. And the major concert venues in and around Salt Lake City are scheduling a fairly busy summer.