83% of Summit County residents ages 5 and older are fully vaccinated

Summit County Health Director Phil Bondurant noted that the public health order which implements a mask mandate at schools that pass the 2% case threshold would likely be extended through the end of the school year. Photo: Summit County, Utah

SUMMIT COUNTY, Utah — At the board of health meeting on Monday, Summit County Health Director Dr. Phil Bondurant said that 83% of county residents ages 5 and older are fully vaccinated.

“What that also means is that 17% of the remaining population is still at risk,” Bondurant said.

“There is definitely some positive impact from natural immunity of a COVID natural infection,” he noted.

“The problem with that is it’s hard to pinpoint a specific number on what natural immunity is and how long it lasts. It’s different in individuals. The state is currently using 180 days. There are other studies that show it might be longer in healthy individuals. But what we’re looking at is making sure that everybody that is eligible to be vaccinated, that wants to be vaccinated, has an opportunity to receive that.”

Bondurant said health department staff worked upwards of 80 hours during the week that vaccines for 5 to 11-year-olds kicked off. He said he is encouraging staff to take time off this month.

“We’re happy with the outcome, although the demand wasn’t quite what we had hoped it would be,” Bondurant said about child vaccine distribution.

As of Monday, only two schools in Summit County, Silver Summit Elementary and North Summit Elementary, are under mask mandates. They both passed the 2% case threshold last week.

The county public health order, instituted by Bondurant, is set to expire on December 31. The health director said that the order will be discussed at the county council meeting on December 15. He said it would likely be extended through June 1, to cover the full school year.

He called the graph posted below his “favorite.”

“It’s my opinion that the line on the bottom, the blue line, is what COVID will look like in terms of cases, once we get back to the new normal,” Bondurant said. “The black line is the uncertainty around unvaccinated cases.”

“This is the real deal. It continues to be the real deal. The difference from that statement in December of 2021 versus that statement in December of 2020 is that we now have a mechanism in place to make it so that we can move on if we can continue to have people vaccinated.”

More from the county Covid dashboard:

Dr. Wing Province of Park City Hospital said staffing levels are “more than adequate” in a report to the board.

“It’s a destination for a lot of people to work,” Province said. He took time to highlight some of the cruel treatment that nurses in the Covid ward have faced throughout the pandemic. A video was presented showing the ICU manager at Park City Hospital talking about work conditions.

Video transcript:

“Pre-pandemic, people trusted us, they you know listened to our education, they respected our expertise and our knowledge — people are not so trusting anymore.

“They get a smattering of information from social media or friends and they’re not coming to healthcare experts to get that information. It’s been long and exhausting. This has been a whole new level of hard.

“A lot of the patients that we’re seeing now are unvaccinated patients and many of them are distrustful of that COVID is actually real. And many of them are very hostile. Patients won’t take medications, because they feel like we’re part of a conspiracy.

“I’ve had a nurse have a walker thrown at her. We’ve had patients cough on us on purpose. Patients that refuse to wear oxygen, even though they desperately need it.

“Family members who try to sneak in medications that have not been proven to be useful… I don’t wear my scrubs anywhere but here in the hospital. Because people say horrible things to you.”