TriCounty Health Department announced changes on Friday to their COVID-19 response moving forward. Their press release shared the following: To assist TriCounty Health Department in efforts to vaccinate the tri-county area against COVID-19, Utah Department of Health has taken over the contact tracing of adult COVID-19 positive cases, therefore calculating the number of positive individuals per county will become more difficult for TriCounty Health staff to maintain. Due to changes in contact tracing and in an effort to focus on vaccinations, beginning Monday, February 15th, TriCounty Health will no longer be separating COVID-19 case counts by county or reporting local testing numbers. Case counts will be separated by tri-county jurisdiction, recovered and active. Cases will be shown week by week as well as transmission index information reflecting local death rates and hospitalizations. Information on total positive and total active, total positive activity week by week, weekly local death and hospital rates and the local transmission index will continue to be reported. Focus during this pandemic is transitioning to a recovery-response, where our efforts at TriCounty Health Department are to educate and vaccinate as many people as possible. Soon vaccination efforts will be opening up to wider populations and will be a larger focus of response. Beginning March 1st, TriCounty Health will be vaccinating those 65 years old and older including those 18 years old and older with specific health conditions, which can be found on tricountyhealth.com/local-
