During an interview with the Fox News Channel on Saturday, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R) said that the state will roll back its mask mandate while keeping the mandate for schools and large gatherings in place. Cox stated that while he’s unsure if April 10 is exactly the right date, he feels confident about the state’s trajectory given its vaccine progress.
Cox said, [relevant remarks begin around 2:50] “So, we’ve been working on this with our legislature. Look, everyone wants to end the mask mandates. We don’t want these to go on one day longer than is absolutely necessary, but we also have this opportunity right now. We’re vaccinating over 25,000 people every day in the state of Utah. And so, figuring out the right moment to do that, again, we’ve been working very closely with our legislature. We will be rolling back part of the mask mandate on April 10. We will still have a mask mandate for schools and for large gatherings, but the broader mandate will go away on April 10. Whether that’s too early or too late, I don’t know, but what I do know is that right now, every person in Utah with a risk factor above one for the coronavirus, that’s everybody over the age of 50 and anybody with any underlying comorbidities, are now eligible to get the vaccine. And we anticipate that by April 1, every adult in the state of Utah will be eligible for the vaccine. We should have about 1.5 million vaccines in the state by April 10, when that mandate goes away. So, we feel really good about where we’re headed and where we’re going to end up.”
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