Thread by @SpencerJCox

Ok, here is part 2 of my earlier thread. I want to share what our incredible team has been working on over the past few months. They don’t get near enough credit. And while I’m only sharing a fraction of what they do...buckle up. It’s a lot. (Sorry for the length of this one).

We call this a whole-of-government response. Every single department in state government has supported our pandemic response.

The State of Utah has more than 200 people working under a Unified Command structure. @UtahDepofHealth is the primary agency, but they are supported by:

@UtahDPS
@UtahEmergency
@UtNationalGuard
@HeritageAndArts
@UtahDOT
@UtHumanServices
@UtHighwayPatrol
@UtDABC
@Utah_DVMA
And more...

Your Unified Command (the organizational structure working to combat the virus) is constantly evaluating and evolving. We have done some things well and are working fiercely at others.

Multicultural outreach:

Even though cases have been rising, thanks to the efforts of health workers our @UtahMulticultural team, community partners, @telemundoutah and @univision32, our Hispanic community has better information to stay safe to slow the spread of the virus.

Hispanics/Latinos make up about 14% of our state’s population. Yet early on in the pandemic, they accounted for 42% of our state’s cases.

Today, their share of cases is around 28%. We still have work to do, but we’re going in the right direction.

Since March, our state’s public information officers have overseen a massive translation effort.
COVID information isn’t just for our Hispanic community, but also for refugees and immigrants who are so important to the fabric of our state.

Those 23 translated languages include:
Arabic
Burmese
Chinese
French
Hindi
Karen
Kinyarwanda
Korean
Marshallese
Mongolian
Nepali
Persian Farsi
Portuguese
Russian
Samoan
Sango
Serbian
Somali
Spanish
Swahili
Tagalog
Tongan
Vietnamese

Since March, our American Sign Language interpreters from @jobsut have been Trenton Marsh, who is deaf, and Clay Anderson. They have helped our communications to everyone at nearly every press conference. 🤟

Testing:
We’ve worked tirelessly to expand testing in communities throughout Utah. Today, there are 100+ sites across the state where you can get tested for COVID-19. This has been a tremendous undertaking by many dedicated partners at our health systems and @UtahDepOfHealth.

When the outbreak began, our testing capacity was low in part due to a shortage of supplies. Testing capacity is currently up to 11,000 people per day.
If you have symptoms, get a test. Find a testing location near you at coronavirus.utah.gov/utah-covid-19-….

Thanks to the help of @UTNationalGuard and @UtahDepOfHealth, we have 33 mobile test teams who can deploy to facilities and communities across the state.

Our mobile test teams have deployed to more than 860 different high-risk facilities including long-term care, businesses, homeless shelters, hospitals, home health agencies, and correctional facilities.

To date, our teams have collected almost 105,000 tests at these facilities.

We’ve provided COVID-19 testing events in neighborhoods and communities hardest hit by the pandemic, partnering with our local health departments and @UtahWellnessBus providing 108 testing events reaching 8,914 people since May.

Utah’s tribal nations and @UtahDepOfHealth have provided 18 testing events for tribal members, testing 4,586 people.

@UtahDepofHealth has sent out 44,990 test kits to rural hospitals, local health departments, long-term care facilities, community health centers, and correctional facilities across the state, focusing on rural and frontier communities who may not have access to testing otherwise.

To date, 546,562 assessments have been completed at testutah.com.

The website asks how you are feeling and can direct you to get a COVID-19 test if recommended.

More than 100 members of the Utah National Guard were mobilized to fill in gaps at mobile testing centers and assisted living facilities to help @UtahDepOfHealth.

The federal government has committed to sending 960,000 BinaxNOW tests to the state by the end of the year. So far, we have received about 213,000 and more are coming.

These tests use a simple nasal swab and give results in 15 minutes.

BinaxNOW are rapid antigen tests and we’re deploying them to nursing homes and health departments all over the state.

More testing gives us better information about where the disease has spread and helps people make quick decisions about how to behave.

Business:

@UtahDepOfHealth sought feedback from stakeholders and industry experts throughout the business community and created a Business Manual to address concerns for Utah workplaces and to help them stay safe and keep businesses open.

coronavirus.utah.gov/business/

@UtahDepOfHealth’s Worksite Team specializes in helping businesses prevent spread of COVID-19, contact tracing, and helping employers know how to handle a case of COVID-19 in their workforce. (Next week I will share more about our economic response).

Our @UtahDepOfHealth @UtahBoardOfEd and Utah’s 13 Local Health Officers created a School Manual to help educational leaders make informed decisions to protect students, teachers, and employees. The manual is available in 8 languages.
coronavirus-download.utah.gov/School/COVID-1…

Community Health Worker Training:

Community Health Workers (CHWs) are some of our most valuable front line workers. They know our communities best and are able to reach community members in ways others may not, especially for our multicultural and vulnerable populations.

@UtahDepOfHealth developed a comprehensive educational training for our CHWs to help better prepare them to meet the needs of our multicultural and vulnerable populations.

Thanks to Unified Command, this training is available in English and Spanish. coronavirus.utah.gov/chw/training/

Long-term care facilities:
Countless lives have been saved through quick response by to 667 events involving COVID-19 in long-term care facilities. 550 events have been resolved. Responses include:
Rapid testing
Training
Isolating COVID positive residents/workers
PPE supplies

Hotline/webchat:
On 3/17, we stood up the state COVID hotline with @utahpoison. Dedicated, trained staff are available 24/7 to answer questions in multiple languages:

Where to get tested
What to do if exposed
Contact tracing
Travel during a pandemic
When to call a doctor

Hotline stats:
145,632 calls
10-13 staff answering calls 24/7
Average call time = 4 min 40 sec
Average wait time = 1 min 6 sec
Average calls per day = 268
Highest number of calls in one day = 4,321 on March 14 when the first case of community spread was identified.

This is in addition to the HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of calls answered by @UtahDepOfHealth, our 13 local health departments, @Intermountain @UofUHealth @Steward @MstarHealth over the pandemic.

Worksite Response:

Acting on information received from @utahpoison calls, worksite contact tracing, and education with businesses, @UtahDepOfHealth worksite teams have worked with more than 15,000 businesses to help them with COVID-19 related issues.

COVID-19 Vaccine:

@UtahDepOfHealth Vaccination Program has been working tirelessly to develop a plan to safely distribute COVID-19 vaccines when they become available. First doses will go to healthcare workers at Utah hospitals.

Data response:
@UtahDepOfHealth activated their team of experts on January 29th and together with our 13 local health departments have been working around-the-clock since to protect the health and safety of every Utahn AND our economy. They have been working their guts out.

coronavirus.utah.gov/case-counts is one of the most robust, transparent data dashboards in the country. @UtahDepOfHealth has been praised by @CDCgov, @COVID19tracking, @ResolveTSL, and data gurus across the country for providing DAILY accurate updates on COVID-19.

@UtahDepOfHealth will soon launch a module on their highly respected IBIS-PH public data query system ibis.health.utah.gov. This will put the data in YOUR hands, letting you run your own queries with our case data. No one does public health data better than Utah.

Teams of statisticians, epidemiologists, scientists, laboratorians, physicians, health educators & PIOs comb through the findings to provide credible, accurate, and timely information. Our goal? Help you make the best informed decisions for your family, business, and community.

Coronavirus.utah.gov has been visited more than 38 MILLION times this year. More than 318k of you have downloaded materials like our business manual, COVID-19 Transmission Index, and school manual.

You’ve seen messages on billboards, TV, social media, and radio. Over the last 4 months alone, 98.4% of Utahns have seen our campaign messages an average of 42.5 times.
308,722,951 total impressions (yes, that’s a real number)
Almost 1 million clicks to coroavirus.utah.gov

Our messages on social media account for 82% of COVID-19 related engagement on social media in Utah.
74 million impressions on social media
3.3 million Utahns reached with our social media campaigns
6.9 million video plays

When we started to see cases climb among our college-aged friends, we got to work. In just days, the #Ronalert campaign launched. Designed with our young friends in mind, we’ve seen great success in getting the message out about being COVID safe on our campuses. #avoidtherona

With 9 MILLION + impressions,
0.59% click-thru-rate (industry standard is 0.08%) and nearly 2 million video views, we are seeing a big difference on campuses.

PPE:

Early on in the pandemic, Utah nearly ran out of Personal Protective Equipment at our hospitals.
At one point, there was only about a week’s worth of PPE left.

We needed PPE.
Unfortunately, so did the rest of the world.

The global supply chain was fractured.

Our Division of Purchasing worked around the clock for months of global competition to order PPE for our medical providers.

Now we have a 3-month supply.

What does $58.4 million in PPE purchases get you?
11 million surgical masks
2.7 million N95 masks
3.3 million gowns
And a lot more. See the checkbook for our state’s purchases here:
purchasing.utah.gov/covid-19

Ok, I know that’s too much for one day, but there is so much more to share. Unfortunately, as I mentioned earlier, none of it matters if each of us don’t take steps to slow this virus. So let’s keep working together and making the small sacrifices needed to save lives! /End