(peaceful music) - [Announcer] PBS Utah presents the Governor's Monthly News Conference, an exchange between Utah reporters and Governor Spencer Cox.

(majestic music continues) - Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

It's great to be with you again.

Thank you for taking time to be with us this morning.

I just want to begin by recognizing that we know that these snow storms are making life a little more complicated, but we desperately need this water, and I'm grateful that winter has arrived and that we have snowplow drivers and public safety officers keeping us safe on the roads.

I'm grateful to see so many neighbors helping neighbors.

Just a reminder to please slow down out there and be careful.

I want to give you just a quick update on where we are with vaccines and boosters, and a quick COVID update, and then we'll go straight to questions.

The good news is that we are seeing reductions in the spread of COVID here in the state of Utah.

Our numbers are coming down.

Our hospitalizations are coming down as well.

That's welcome news.

We're seeing numbers that we saw, basically, we haven't seen since about August or early September.

That's a great direction, and we're happy to see that coming down.

All of that being said, there are some concerning trends out there as well.

As we gather with family and friends during the holiday season, we hope that everyone will be safe and happy, and a reminder that we are not out of this pandemic yet.

Yesterday was a sobering reminder of this as we saw how deadly this disease can be with the death of a young boy between the ages of one and 14, we can't release any more information than that, from Davis County.

Our hearts go out to the family of this young Utahan and to all who have lost loved ones during this pandemic.

We did see last year, of course, a major spike during the holiday season.

And as we are spending more time indoors and more time together, we would just encourage people to exercise precautions and be safe.

A reminder that spending Christmas in the ICU, it's never fun to be in the ICU, it's even worse during Christmas time, and we want to protect everyone.

One change that has happened since the last time we spoke last month when we encouraged everyone to get boosters ages 18 and older is that now boosters are available for those ages 16 and older.

And we know that boosters are having a huge impact against the Delta variant.

We also know that as this new variant, the Omicron variant, makes its way into the United States and into Utah, that boosters perform much better against that variant, and so we are encouraging people to get their boosters.

We were also asking all vaccine providers to proactively reach out to those over the age of 65 as well, those with underlying medical conditions, and encourage them directly to get their booster doses.

So far, 23% of those ages five to 11 have had at least one dose, which is great news.

We also continue to do well with those ages 12 to 18 years old, with just over 234,000 kids in this age range that have received their first dose, which is 63% of those that are eligible.

Yesterday marked the one-year anniversary since the first vaccine was administered here in the state of Utah.

Since then, we have delivered over four million doses in one year, over four million doses.

Even a year ago, I don't think any of us imagined we could get to a number that high.

And we have more than 2.1 million Utahans that have received at least one dose, and that's 65%.

And 1.87 million are fully vaccinated, that's 57.5%.

That's a remarkable achievement.

In addition to these booster doses that are now being made available, we are expecting some new, exciting oral antiviral treatments, we've talked about that before.

We're working very closely with the CDC and the FDA, making sure that as we get them we can get them out to the Utahans who need them, those who will be qualified to receive them.

And we will be receiving limited doses.

We don't know what the dosages look like right out of the gate, but we will be sharing that information with you as soon as soon as we get it.

And just another reminder that we have significantly expanded the monoclonal antibody treatments.

We have a robust statewide system for delivering them.

More people are eligible now than ever before.

Last week for the first time we delivered over 1,000 of those monoclonal antibody treatments, and that is helping us to reduce hospitalizations.

Yesterday or the day before we were under 500 for the first time in a long time, and so we're anxious to bring hospitalizations down.

As we are seeing people being hospitalized for other illnesses, and that's keeping our hospitalization rates high, we need to reduce the amount of COVID hospitalizations as much as possible.

Now, for those that are interested, you can visit coronavirus.utah.gov/mat to find out if you qualify for monoclonal antibody treatments.

With that, I just want to wish all Utahans a wonderful holiday season filled with joy and love and family.

This has been a very challenging year, but we've also seen some true heroism, resiliency and successes.

We truly believe that we are blessed to be part of a great state living with wonderful people as our neighbors.

And with that, I'm happy to take any questions that you have.

- Governor, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling recently on Utah's lawsuit, or the one that we're involved in, on federal vaccine mandates for healthcare workers, saying that the 14 states that sued, they can block the vaccine mandate for healthcare workers.

Do you agree with the ruling?

- I do, that's why we joined the lawsuit.

And I shared this before.

Look, every time we meet, I talk about the importance of getting vaccinated and the importance of protecting those around us, protecting those we love.

We're desperate to get as many people vaccinated as possible, and government has a role to play, but the way the president has done this, I believe, is unconstitutional.

The Fifth Circuit has agreed with that, and there are several lawsuits that are moving forward.

We'll note that that's an injunction.

That case will move forward.

And the Congress has the ability to do this.

That's the right way to do it.

If the president wants to go that direction, he needs the backing of those who are elected to make those laws, and so that's important, that we follow constitutional law.

- On a legislative level, though, lawmakers may be planning bills that would block government from issuing any kind of vaccine mandate.

Do you support that or not?

- Well, I think we're, at least I hope we're past that.

We had a special session where we dealt with those laws, and I think the law we passed, the compromise that we came up with is one that makes sense.

Look, we need to come together.

Taking the animosity out of the room, I think, is important.

We've been able to successfully do that, I believe, here in the state of Utah with the law that was passed, and I feel comfortable with where we are right now.

- [Ben] You don't support any kind of expansion of that then?

- I don't.

I think we've hit the right balance here.

- Governor, last month at your news conference you talked about your desire to take a message to the superintendents of schools across the state after the death of Izzy Tichenor to address racism and bullying.

Has that conversation with the superintendents happened yet?

And where do you feel things are moving now, a month later, in dealing with racism and bullying in schools?

- Daniel, thank you for bringing that up.

I did have that conversation.

About a week ago, I was able to meet with all the superintendents in the state.

We had a wonderful discussion, a really, I think, candid discussion, a raw discussion about what is happening in their school districts.

We were able to listen to each other, listen to school districts that felt like they were having some success.

Some of the best practices, they're sharing that around.

We had many members of my team, my cabinet were there, including Nubia Pena, who is my chief advisor, the senior advisor, working on multicultural affairs.

And the lieutenant governor was there, as well as my chief education advisor, the state superintendent Syd Dickson was there.

And this was a very powerful discussion.

It's an ongoing discussion.

In fact, we will be having follow-up meetings, my team, with superintendents, again, working on best practices, finding ways to engage on these topics, making sure that all of our children feel safe, that they can deal with, look, as long as there have been kids and human beings, there has been bullying, we know that that happens.

It happens in every school, it happened to me, it will continue to happen.

The question is how we deal with these things.

And that's what we're working on, making sure that our educators have the tools they need to deal with these things quickly, efficiently and safely, making sure that all of our kids feel safe, that we have an environment where they feel that they can learn, and continuing to engage parents.

So often these things can and should be taken care of at home.

I think we all feel bad that we're placing more and more emphasis on our teachers having to deal with things outside of just teaching and educating our students, but as long as these things are happening, we have to deal with them at school.

I left that meeting feeling very optimistic about where we're headed, that superintendents are recognizing that this isn't something they can just kind of put in the corner and maybe it'll go away, that it's something that we have to confront head-on and that they're willing to have those difficult conversations.

- And you see concrete action coming out of those discussions.

- I do, yeah, yeah, I do.

And again, the best part was having superintendents sharing things that they are actually doing and having other superintendents say, "That's a great idea, we're gonna try that in our school."

There are some pilot programs that are happening in different schools where they're sharing the results of those and the data from those.

And then again, our team will have follow-up conversations with the superintendents to help them implement some of these ideas.

- Governor, given the recent safety threats in two of our schools because of threats of violence, do you have concerns about violence in our schools, and does Utah need to do more to address this issue?

And are these threats indicative of unmet mental needs of the state's youth?

- Sure, Katie, you ask a couple questions in there.

Am I worried, and the answer is yes.

Certainly, I'm very worried.

We hear of violence in schools.

Certainly, there are very high profile cases that have happened that you all have covered over the years.

We've been fortunate here in the state of Utah to avoid some of that terrible and deadly violence that we've seen in other places, but we've been fortunate because we've had quick response from incredible law enforcement officials.

We've had students, parents who have reported to the proper authorities the possibility of the potential violence in schools.

And there have been interventions that have happened ahead of time to prevent that from happening.

We have some tools that other states don't have, and it's one of the reasons we encourage the SafeUtah app to be downloaded in every school on every smart device.

So that there is a piece of that.

We talked about that mostly for mental health needs, but there is also a piece in there for education where students can anonymously report any type of threat that is happening.

We get those threats every day, those are shared immediately with the appropriate law enforcement and school officials.

And I can tell you that there have been cases where law enforcement, that haven't made the news, where there have been interventions, and we believe that it prevented any type of violence or casualties.

And so, yes, I'm concerned.

And these are not just conversations that are happening, but concrete actions that are happening in every school.

Governor Herbert and I worked really hard to get additional counseling resources into every school.

It's one of the things I'm most proud of.

We had about $29 million a couple years ago that went to our schools to hire additional counselors.

And it is making a huge difference.

I was able to talk, I can't remember if I mentioned this last time or not, but I was talking with a superintendent down in Sevier County about one of the schools and some of the interventions that they've done there with their counseling team to where they were having upwards of 30 referrals to the office every week for student behavior, and now they're down to about three a week because they've been engaging with students.

And this mental health piece, it's absolutely driving it.

We have an empathy crisis in our country.

We know we have a mental health crisis in our country amongst young people.

Just yesterday, the First Lady and I convened a group of people.

It was a convention, we had over 400 participants virtually talking about the mental health needs of young people in our state.

And we had, over the course of the past year, we've had a group of experts that have come together.

They will be releasing their policy recommendations over the next couple of weeks.

You'll all get to see that.

And we're hopeful that these policy recommendations can be used during the legislative session to help us close some of the gaps that we're finding out there.

But we are doing more today than we have ever done in the history of our state on this issue.

And we still have a long ways to go.

- Governor, what is the state doing to prepare and try to limit the severity of an Omicron surge and try to avoid hospital overload?

Some other states have gone back kind of and instituted some public health measures.

Like California, for example, now has an indoor mask mandate again.

Is that something you'd consider, and why or why not?

- We're gonna be working very closely with our public health officials, as we always do, looking at getting more information on this variant and looking at its spread as it starts to move towards Utah.

We know we have a couple of cases already in the state of Utah.

We are processing about 10% of our cases every year.

We're sequencing them to figure out which variants are here and how fast they're spreading.

That 10% number may seem small, but that's actually higher than most states.

That's a pretty robust number and gives us a really good insight into what is happening out there.

There's still so much we don't know about Omicron.

What we do know is that it spreads very quickly.

We're seeing that, of course, in South Africa.

We're seeing it now in Great Britain.

And we're learning more about it every day.

It also appears that it is less severe in the illness so far.

Again, there's a split on this and the data isn't clear yet.

We'll learn more, I think, over the next couple of weeks to try to understand that.

That's the piece, I think, that matters the most.

We have lots of illnesses that spread very quickly, but if they're not filling up hospitals and killing people, we go about our business.

If they are filling up hospitals and killing people, then obviously it becomes much more concerning.

And so we're still in this Delta wave, and again, going down, which is good news.

It's looking like Delta doesn't provide much natural immunity for Omicron, so that's certainly a concern for us.

What we do know, though, is that boosters work, boosters work against Omicron, especially to limit severe illness and hospitalization.

And so the thing we can do right now more than anything, and this is my message to everyone out there, is now is the time to get your booster, not when Omicron is here.

Now is the time to get your booster.

If you have time off during the holidays, it's great time to get your booster in case you need a little time to recover.

My wife and I got our boosters about a month ago, I had a sore arm, nothing more.

Didn't miss a day of work, it was a very minor.

And so that's the thing that we can do most.

And as we talk to our healthcare experts, that's what they're recommending.

I talked to them yesterday, they said, "Our message right now is to get vaccinated, if you're not vaccinated, and to get boosted, if you are vaccinated," so that's what we're doing.

As we get new information, we will share that.

We will meet with legislative leadership and we will continue those discussions.

- Is any sort of public health, I mean, obviously, your hands right now are kind of tied by legislation that was passed earlier this year, but is that a discussion that you could possibly have with lawmakers to roll back some of those measures if we do get a really bad wave of Omicron?

- Sure, we're always hopeful that we don't have to roll back those measures.

I think that they're probably less effective now than ever before as more and more people, we're seeing that fatigue set in after getting close to two years now, people are just tired of this.

We also have more tools than ever before to protect ourselves and our families.

In the first wave of this virus, we didn't have personal protective gear, so we didn't have high-quality masks.

Now, high-quality masks are readily available to anyone that wants them.

We have high-quality masks available for every student in the state.

You can get high-quality masks for your families to protect yourselves.

We have vaccines and we have boosters, things that we didn't have before.

So that's another way that we can protect people.

And so, again, people have the ability to take care of themselves and have that choice and we'll continue to encourage people to do that.

- Governor, California, Arizona, and Nevada yesterday announced an agreement to take less water from the Colorado River.

Meanwhile, a report from the Utah Rivers Council argues Utah's taking more water than it's allotted under the Colorado River Compact.

And stakeholders have long said the Upper Basin states aren't serious about cutting water use.

Is it time to look at where Utah can start to scale back its use of the Colorado River?

- So, Katie, we have seen a preliminary draft of that report, we're going to be looking at the underlying assumptions in that report.

We have data that shows that we are not using our full allotment of the Colorado River.

And so those discussions, and again, our scientists are going to be looking into that and having those conversations.

So that's the first piece.

The second piece is the that Lower Basin has been overusing their portion of the Colorado River for years.

Everyone knows that, that's not a secret.

And so the Upper Basin states have absolutely been under-utilizing their amounts compared to the Lower Basin states, and California being the most egregious example of that.

All of that being said, none of that matters because we know that the hydrology of the river is changing.

There is complete agreement on that.

We know that there is going to be less water in the Colorado River for everyone.

And we are about to enter negotiations around the Colorado River Compact.

And what I can tell you is that there will be broad agreement, including Utah and the Upper Basin states, together with the Lower Basin states, as we work to apportion what the new hydrology of the river looks like.

And that means all of us are going to have to re-examine where we are and how much we're using.

It also means we're going to have to be creative in trying to restore the river basin and taking proactive steps and investing in ways to improve tributaries and improve our waterways so that we can get more water where it needs to go.

And Utah is actually leading the nation in some of those watershed restoration efforts.

We have projects all across the state that are getting noticed now.

Even our best scientists are amazed and surprised at how well some of these projects are working to improve the hydrology, improve the quality of the water, reduce fire damage and bring back wildlife into these areas that are being treated, both mechanically and via prescribed burns.

And so we're optimistic that there are ways to actually improve the water flows into that river and we'll be working with the other basin states to do more of that in their states as well.

- Governor, what are your thoughts on the legislature's move to audit our election systems?

Are you worried that that's going to decrease confidence in our voting?

- Yeah, thanks, Bryan.

I'm not worried that it's going to decrease confidence in our voting.

In fact, I think it will do just the opposite.

For those who are really interested in the truth, it will just add to the confidence.

We did an audit two years ago, a legislative audit, and that audit was very conclusive.

They came back, and looking at the precise, it's been a while since I've looked directly at that, in fact, it's been a couple of years, but if I recall, they were looking specifically about people signing up to vote and the processes we had in place to prevent double voting and those types of things.

And we came back with a clean bill of health.

It was a very positive audit.

And we're not afraid at all of auditing our systems.

We stand by them.

We have 29 county clerks that we work with.

And again, as somebody who ran elections for seven-and-a-half years, I can tell you, we have some of the best county clerks anywhere in the country.

And we've been recognized widely for having a great voting system that allows registered voters to vote, makes it easier for people to cast their vote, and works to prevent people who shouldn't be voting from voting.

So we have no fear whatsoever of this type of audit.

I do worry that there are some people out there who aren't interested in that at all.

All they're interested is to lower the trust in the system so that they can make it harder for people to vote.

And that's something I'm not interested in.

And I don't think any audit will satisfy that small subset of people, small but very vocal subset of people who have bought into conspiracy theories and are willing to just spread lies without any proof.

So, there's nothing I can do about that group.

They're not going to believe anything I say and they're not going to believe anything the auditors say.

But to people who are interested in the truth, I think this will be a very helpful audit.

I will also say that every single year since I've been lieutenant governor in 2013, we have changed and improved our election system.

We are constantly doing internal audits to find ways to make it better.

And in fact, we have several changes that we've already proposed.

Lieutenant Governor Henderson, who's doing an excellent job of running elections, she's a major upgrade from the last guy, they have already proposed ways to improve security and make our elections better.

So look, election security is not a stagnant thing.

We're always learning and improving, and that's healthy, that's good, that's what we should be doing.

So anybody that says we shouldn't make any changes, we should just leave it the same, they shouldn't be trusted either.

But I'm more worried about the people who are saying that we should just tear it all down and get rid of it and start over, because this is the bedrock of our Republic, and people without evidence who would undermine that bedrock are playing a very dangerous game.

- Governor, the "Deseret News" and Hinckley Institute recently conducted a poll asking Utahans about the redistricting process and if they support the boundaries dividing Salt Lake County into four congressional districts, and only 25% of Utahans said they support that boundary.

And separately, about 46% said the Utah legislature should have voted on the independent commission's maps.

Your thoughts on these poll results.

- Yeah, well, we've talked about this many, many times.

I don't know that I have anything new to add to that conversation other than what the constitution of the state of Utah says.

And so I'm not surprised by those numbers.

I think that that was always the danger that the legislature ran when this process was set up in the first place, and so I suspect that we'll see pushes to change that again for the next 10 years.

- All right, and that's all the time that we have for our television broadcast.

Thank you so much for joining us for the Governor's Monthly News Conference.

- [Announcer] This has been the Governor's Monthly News Conference.

For transcripts, full video and more information, visit PBSUtah.org/governor.

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