| Updated: Jan. 31, 2021, 9:53 p.m.
With the more contagious U.K. variant of COVID-19 circulating in Utah and widespread vaccination months away, Gov. Spencer Cox says he would “encourage people, if you can, to upgrade the quality of your masks.”
Utah is working with the Biden administration, he added at a Thursday news conference, “on getting more and better masks out to people . The right quality mask protects the user as well as those around them.”
So should Utahns double up like inaugural poet Amanda Gorman, who wore a plain mask under her sparkly red rhinestone one? Or set aside their cloth facial fashions for medical-quality gear?
Study suggests severe COVID-19 among pregnant women raises risk of preterm birth, death
By Kayla Rivas
There is still limited data about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines for women who are pregnant.
However, the lead study author said adverse outcomes were not associated with mild-to-moderate coronavirus infections. Our research shows that serious pregnancy complications appear to occur in women who have severe or critical cases of COVID and not those who have mild or moderate cases, Dr. Torri D. Metz, a maternal-fetal medicine subspecialist and associate professor at the University of Utah Health, said in a related news release. This information helps us to counsel our patients more effectively. For pregnant women who have contracted a mild or moderate case of COVID-19, these findings can help to alleviate their fears that they are at an increased risk of having serious pregnancy complications due to the disease.
A worker at a vaccination site in Davis County, Utah uses a tablet to scan a vaccine record.
Davis County Health Department
After a long day of doling out Covid-19 vaccines, workers in Utah County toil late into the night entering data on every single dose. What they don’t finish, they come in early the next morning to file before the state’s daily 7 a.m. reporting deadline.
Even though the county’s appointment system is electronic, each vaccination generates a paper record which must be entered, one at a time, into an electronic system so that they can be transmitted to the state’s immunization registry. If there’s a delay in reporting, a shot that’s in someone’s arm might look like it’s still sitting in a freezer, or worse, that it’s been lost.
SALT LAKE CITY Pregnant women who developed severe symptoms of COVID-19 were at higher risk of pregnancy complications and even death compared to women who experienced no symptoms, or mild or moderate symptoms, according to a new study led by a University of Utah researcher.
The good news, according to the study, is that most pregnant women who were studied didn t experience severe or critical effects of COVID-19; however, Dr. Torri Metz, an associate professor and maternal-fetal medicine subspecialist at University of Utah Health, and the study s lead author, said it s still difficult to know why some pregnant women developed severe symptoms while others didn t.