COVID-19 vaccines have been proven to be safe and effective. However, no vaccines are 100% effective at preventing illness in vaccinated people. There will be a small percentage of fully vaccinated people who still get sick, are hospitalized, or die from COVID-19. These are called “breakthrough cases.” Fortunately, there is evidence that vaccination may make breakthrough cases less severe and people who are fully vaccinated may be less likely to spread the disease to others. In the data below, breakthrough cases are defined as someone who has a positive test ≥14 days after they have completed the full series of an authorized COVID-19 vaccine. The UDOH determines vaccine status for cases using two methods: by linking all known cases to vaccination records reported into the Utah Statewide Immunization Information System (USIIIS) and through self-report by asking all cases if they have been fully vaccinated. Breakthrough cases may be over-represented in the data due to this self-reporting.
Seven-Day Case Rate for All Utahns: This rate reflects the total number of cases in Utah residents reported to the UDOH.
Case Rate for Vaccinated Utahns: This rate reflects the number of breakthrough infections that occurred in people who are at least 14 days after their final COVID-19 vaccine dose.
Case Rate for Unvaccinated Utahns: This rate reflects the number of cases that occur in Utah residents who are not fully vaccinated. This includes cases in people who have only received one dose of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine, or for whom 14 days have not passed between the last dose of their vaccine series and their positive test.
In the last 28 days, Utahns who are eligible for the vaccine, but are still unvaccinated had 5 times greater risk of getting COVID-19, 5.7 times the risk of being hospitalized, and 4.8 times the risk of dying than people who are vaccinated. These rates show more up-to-date risk in vaccinated vs unvaccinated people given the recent trends in testing, transmission, and circulating lineages of COVID-19 (like Delta). Please Note: these data may change quickly as new cases are identified and should be considered preliminary.
These analyses exclude the last three days because people with COVID-19 in this time may not be interviewed yet and their vaccination status may not yet be known.
Person-day population estimates: To estimate the eligible Utah population 12 years and older who are fully vaccinated, UDOH calculates the cumulative total people 14 days post full vaccination reported into USIIS each day and sums all of the days. To estimate the eligible but unvaccinated population, UDOH calculates the cumulative total people 14 days post full vaccination minus the 2019 census population estimate for people 12 years and older each day and sums all of the days.
*Rates are a cumulative incidence rate per million person-days and are calculated as the “sum of people observed with COVID-19 outcome each day” divided by the “sum of people vaccinated or unvaccinated each day” times 1,000,000. **The rate ratio is the “Incidence rate of Unvaccinated People” divided by “Incidence rate of Vaccinated People.” The rate ratio is interpreted as how many times more the risk is for unvaccinated people than vaccinated people. If the lower bound of the 95% Confidence Interval (CI) is greater than 1, then the vaccines have a statistically significant effect on risk. Groups that don’t have overlapping 95% confidence intervals have statistically significant differences in risk, while groups whose confidence intervals do overlap are not statistically different.
There may be large daily changes in the 28-day risk ratios and the total deaths since February 1 because of small case counts. These changes do not indicate differences in vaccine efficacy but instead reflect UDOH identifying additional hospitalizations and deaths in this time window, which often lag behind case reports.
This analysis relies on surveillance data and does not control for individual differences in risk, location, or testing practices so these data should be considered in conjunction with clinical trials and other vaccine efficacy studies that show the vaccine is very effective at preventing symptomatic illness and severe disease.
Data on pre-existing conditions are gathered from a variety of sources, including case interviews and medical records (when available). Case interviews are conducted by public health investigators across state and local health departments to determine what potential medical risk factors cases may have had prior to developing COVID-19. Data gathered through interviews is self-reported by cases and is dependent on their willingness to share this information with health departments. This is not a complete list of conditions and rates may change as we collect more data and performs additional analysis.
Data collection forms used by the Utah Department of Health and Utah’s Local Health Departments have been updated to collect information on additional pre-existing conditions: autoimmune conditions, disabilities, hypertension, severe/morbid obesity, psychological/psychiatric conditions, and substance abuse. The previous neurologic pre-existing condition has been moved into the broader disability condition, which includes neurological, neurodevelopmental, intellectual, and physical disabilities. Additionally, investigators are now able to distinguish between type 1 and type 2 diabetes. All analyses of these new conditions are based on the subset of cases that use the new forms. These forms no longer collect information on specific conditions from cases without that condition or where the status is unknown; this information remains available for the overall ‘Any Pre-Existing Condition’ question.
Examples of persons with compromised immune systems include those with cancer and transplant patients who are taking certain immunosuppressive drugs, persons living with HIV/AIDS, and those with inherited diseases that affect the immune system. Chronic pulmonary conditions include uncontrolled asthma, emphysema, and COPD. Examples of persons with a disability include those with dementia, seizure disorders, cognitive impairment, and Alzheimer’s disease. Psychological/psychiatric conditions include schizophrenia, major depressive disorder, and bipolar disorder.
In the data below, counts below 5 are suppressed to protect privacy. Suppressed values in the chart are represented by the percent equivalent to a count of 5 in that category.
The charts below show if the public health investigator has determined a case to have potentially acquired COVID-19 through known contact to another confirmed case, or through “Community Spread”, where a single source of infection cannot be identified. In this analysis, “Known Contact” represents any case with a known contact to a confirmed case in the 14 days before experiencing symptoms through contact tracing, self-report, or outbreak identification. “Community” is any case with a completed investigation, but no indication of a known contact. “Unknown/ Pending” are cases who either could not be contacted for an interview, would not provide contact information, are recently reported and not yet interviewed, or where incomplete information has been entered by the investigator. Data will be updated weekly on Wednesday for the past calendar week and may backfill significantly as investigations are completed and outbreaks are identified.
Potential exposures are identified through case investigations and are not mutually exclusive. “Household” exposures are defined as any case identified through contact tracing of household contacts, or who self-reports a confirmed case of COVID-19 in the household. “Social” exposures are defined as any case identified through contract tracing of social contacts (like church, group gathering, dating, friends, and coworkers outside of the worksite) or who self-report known social contact with a confirmed case. “Workplace” exposures are defined as any case who reports known contact to a confirmed case in the workplace, or is part of an identified worksite outbreak (two or more cases associated with a worksite within 14 days). Finally, Travel exposures are any case who reports known contact to a confirmed case while traveling outside of the state of Utah, or with known contact to a confirmed case through CDC contact tracing of flights. Often, cases have multiple exposures in the categories or, in some instances, no exposures in these categories.
The Utah Department of Health collects information on mask compliance through the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) where Utah residents are asked to rank how often they wear a mask in public or when unable to socially distance. The response options are always, usually, sometimes, rarely, or never.
The BRFSS is a random-digit dial telephone survey of adults aged 18 and older. In 2020, about 25% of completed interviews came from landline phones and 75% from cellular phones in Utah. In order to have timely estimates, the data are downloaded weekly from the system and are not adjusted to reflect unequal sampling or population characteristics. However, sampling is done proportionally to population and the broad coverage of telephones makes this data sufficient for state and local estimates.
Note: The UDOH has transitioned all mask wearing surveillance data to the BRFSS methodology. The BRFSS is more robust and representative of Utah’s population than the Physical Mask Wearing Survey data. Additionally, the data now show the three most recently completed months, plus the current month, rather than all available data. This is important for understanding current trends in mask wearing.
These data reflect any individual who reports being an employee in the healthcare setting in any capacity such as cooks, environmental services, administrative roles, support staff, physicians, nurses, respiratory therapists, pharmacists, home health and personal care aids, etc. Healthcare workers also include those who commonly have patient interactions such as dentists, physical therapists, EMTS, firefighters, phlebotomists, and other technical occupations. These data are not intended to represent the amount of transmission occurring within the healthcare setting. Rather, the data can help us have a better understand the burdenour healthcare systems due to employees testing positive for COVID-19.
Data for this report were accessed on September 03, 2021 06:59 AM.