SALT LAKE CITY — Thirteen new Utah cases of coronavirus were reported Saturday, including a man who works at a Park City bar who came to work while symptomatic. Health officials said his is the first case of a community transmission of COVID-19 in Utah.
Another case is a Herriman man who contracted the virus while at a work conference in Colorado who says he has “patient zero guilt” knowing that he was in contact with other people. Another is a Davis County resident who contracted the virus out of the country but returned home and did all the right things, health officials say.
Another is a University of Utah graduate student who tested positive for COVID-19 after returning from another state. Then at 10 p.m. Saturday, Salt Lake County announced eight more cases — including three children.
That brings the number of Utah coronavirus cases to at least 25, though health officials use different criteria in some of their official counts.
The Park City case “is the first case of community transmission in Utah, and it reinforces the importance of all the community mitigation efforts we’ve been talking about for the past several weeks,” said Dr. Angela Dunn, state epidemiologist for the Utah Department of Health.
“Everyone needs to continue to do their part: Stay home if you are sick, keep your kids home if they are sick, and practice good hygiene to avoid sharing your germs to others.”
The bar employee, who officials identified as a Summit County resident between the ages of 21 and 60, has symptoms, but he is quarantined and recovering at his home. He sought care from a doctor and after tests for other viral illnesses were negative, he was given a COVID-19 test, Dunn said during a press briefing Saturday.
She described his symptoms as “cough, malaise, joint pain.”
He worked at the front desk of the Spur Bar and Grill checking IDs and “did report to work while he was symptomatic,” officials said.
Salt Lake County reported nine new coronavirus cases Saturday, bringing the county’s numbers to 14, including Utah Jazz players Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell who were tested in Oklahoma City but returned to Utah where they’re quarantined at home and are being monitored.
Of the 14 Salt Lake County cases, 11 are adult and three are children.
“Two of the infected children attended school while symptomatic; the schools potentially affected are Hunter High School in West Valley City and Entheos Academy, a charter school with campuses in Magna and Kearns,” a statement from the Salt Lake County Health Department says
The schools have been notified and the students and their families are being quarantined in their homes.
Herriman resident Casey Garland said he was told Saturday afternoon that he has coronavirus. Garland attended a work conference in Vail, Colorado, through Sunday. He started to get sick before flying home on Monday,
”I had a cough, but I thought nothing of it,” he said. “I continued to work Tuesday and Wednesday, and Thursday morning I had a dentist appointment.”
That afternoon, he received word that someone who’d attended the conference had tested positive for COVID-19. He was tested Thursday evening.
Garland has spent the days since trying to let people he’s been in contact with know about his exposure. He even posted it on Facebook in an effort to let people know if they’d been exposed. He is self-quarantined in his basement because he has a 2-year-old with asthma.
”I feel like I had this patient zero guilt,” he told the Deseret News. “I know it’s not my fault, but I still feel like, ‘What have I done?’ I think there will be a psychological battle of knowing that it’s not my fault, but also accepting that yeah, there are people out there who are in danger because they’ve been in contact with me. That kind of sucks.”
He said he is extremely grateful that he was notified as quickly as he was because the Washington native has heard many stories of people not reporting being sick for a myriad of reasons, including being blamed for having things canceled.
”I am super grateful that the organizer reached out and let us know,” he said of the work conference. “I reached out to the organizer and thanked him for his transparency.”
Late Saturday night, the University of Utah announced that a graduate student who works in the U.’s counseling center is in isolation off-campus with the virus. “Co-workers and friends who had direct contact with this individual have been contacted and are being asked to self-isolate as well,” according to a U. statement.
Public health officials interviewed the Summit County bar employee about his life and what he does each day, whom he comes in contact with, and what he does while at work. They believe the greatest risk he posed was to his co-workers, not customers. But Rich Bullough, executive director of the Summit County Department of Health, said anyone who visited the Spur Bar and Grill (on Main Street in Park City) on or after March 6 should monitor their temperature and if they develop symptoms, call a doctor about being formally tested.
The man’s contact with patrons was described as “brief” by officials, although he likely interacted with most of them during his shift.
“As far as the number of patrons that come through on a given night, they’re large,” he said. “They can be in the hundreds.”
Dunn said that while officials believe the risk to patrons is low, they should “monitor themselves for two weeks after their last visit to the Spur, and if they do develop symptoms, call ahead to their provider or use telehealth.”
The man did participate in employee meetings, which meant significant contact with co-workers. Bullough said they worked with the manager of the bar until late Friday night on protocols. The business closed and was being professionally cleaned Saturday by an independent contractor with the health department’s oversight.
The approximately 20 exposed employees will not be working, Bullough said, “and they’ll be self-isolating and monitoring their (physical health).”
The families of those workers have also been asked to self-quarantine out of an abundance of caution. The restaurant will likely have to hire temporary workers to reopen.
That becomes the fifth Summit County case confirmed by the county’s health department. Only one of those first four cases is a resident of Summit County, so this makes two residents who have now tested positive. The others were visitors from out of state and are not counted in the state’s official tally of coronavirus cases, but in the interest of public health, Summit County officials released the positive tests.
“We made a promise as a county ... government,” Bullough said, “that we were going to be transparent with the public. The only way that we’re going to get through this thing with as little impact as we can have, is if we build trust. ... I feel very strongly that that if we begin to violate that trust, it’s this hurdle is going to be larger than it needs to be.”
The out-of-state visitors remain self-quarantined with their families in Summit County, and Bullough’s office is monitoring them.
The Park City incident is the first case of a Utahn who hasn’t traveled outside the state, or who has not been around a known, confirmed case, testing positive for COVID-19, the illness caused by the new coronavirus.
The man is being monitored by public health for fever and respiratory symptoms at his home where he lives with a roommate who has been out of town.
“Residents of Summit County should be assured that we are doing everything within our means to protect their health,” said Thomas C. Fisher, Summit County manager. “On Thursday, Dr. Bullough and I signed local emergency declarations in anticipation of the very situation we have announced this morning. These declarations were not made lightly and will allow us to utilize emergency resources to combat the spread of COVID-19.
“Summit County, our municipalities and our other community partners are prepared and ready.”
The bar employee became the 15th person in Utah who is either a resident treated in the state or a visitor diagnosed with COVID-19 while in the state. Garland the 16th.
The 17th is the Davis County resident only described as between 18 and 60 who is recovering at home. The resident learned after returning home that he or she may have been exposed while traveling out of the country.
“This person and their family should be commended for doing what is best for the entire community. Because of quick self-quarantine and social distancing actions taken, they ensured this exposure to COVID-19 would not spread further in our community,” the Davis County Health Department said in a statement late Saturday.
The person took great lengths to sleep and eat separately from family members and called ahead to health care provider and testing facility “so they could be protected and completely ready for their arrival.”
In addition to the five cases in Summit County and 14 in Salt Lake County, Weber-Morgan district has one case and the Davis district now has two. St. George resident Mark Jorgensen tested positive for COVID-19 while in quarantine in California after leaving a cruise ship. He was transferred from a California hospital to Intermountain Medical Center in Murray, and has since been released to isolation in his home. He will be quarantined until he has two negative tests in a row. As of Friday, he continued to test positive.
The other two cases are two out-of-state residents, but the state health department has not released information about them or what counties they are in.
Summit County officials are grappling with a number of issues in the wake of the reality that the virus is spreading unbeknownst to officials. First, with some ski resorts still open, will that continue to pull visitors from out of state and out of town into a community that has the highest numbers of confirmed cases so far?
Second, county officials are extremely concerned at the number of people who work in the service industry who do not have sick time or paid time off through employment, and they will likely be tempted to go to work, even if they’re symptomatic.
Officials met with local ski resort managers Saturday and were working on a number of options, including asking foundations to help employees without paid leave to assist with the financial issues that can come from being quarantined for 14 or more days.
Park City, Deer Valley, Alta, Snowbird, Solitude, Brighton and Woodward Park City ski resorts all announced Saturday afternoon that they are closing all operations starting Sunday through at least March 22.
“While we haven’t yet put in any formalized travel restrictions, I do recommend if you have the option of not traveling to Summit County, it’s probably wise not to do so at this point,” Bullough said. “When you know that we have to community spread, that increases the risk of transmission. That is not a formal policy by any means.”
On Friday, officials in Westerly, Rhode Island, closed schools after they said two children tested positive for the virus, including one who received an autograph from either Gobert or Mitchell on March 6.
Since then many have speculated that the child was exposed to the virus when he received the autograph or that the child exposed the NBA player to the virus. When asked Saturday if transmission could occur through something like an autograph, Dunn said it could not.