SALT LAKE COUNTY, Utah — After Summit County issued a stay-at-home order Wednesday, Salt Lake County Mayor issued a statement addressing the potential for a similar order in Salt Lake County.
Ten days ago, I formed a Unified Command to respond to COVID-19 in Salt Lake County. It is essential that decisions so greatly affecting the lives and livelihood of county residents are based on solid data. We need to know to what degree social distancing and other measures have been effective; with COVID-19’s incubation period, the turnaround time for testing, and the time necessary to aggregate and analyze data, we planned to have validated data for Salt Lake County 14–21 days after we saw infections locally.
With our first case of COVID-19 in Utah 19 days ago, we are now evaluating the virus’s impacts and modeling its potential spread in relation to our available medical supplies so we have a strong, data-driven platform for making critical decisions about potentially modifying health orders and recommendations.
Salt Lake County’s Unified Command—SLCo Health Department Executive Director Gary Edwards, SLCo Emergency Management Division Chief Clint Mecham, and I—continue to convene our senior leadership team and health experts to advise us, through evidence-based practices, what our next steps should be to best protect the residents of Salt Lake County.
We will be in touch with media to provide more complete direction to county residents as soon as information is available.
Mayor Jenny Wilson
