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Colorado public health officials on Friday raised concerns that the number of new COVID-19 cases across the state has stopped falling, while hospitalizations of people with the virus have increased. over the past week after a steady decline that started in mid-September.
In recent months, the rate of new coronavirus infections in Colorado has been lower than the national rate, state epidemiologist Dr Rachel Herlihy said at a news briefing. Now, however, as cases are declining faster nationally than in Colorado, the national and national rates are about the same: a 7-day average of about 200 per 100,000 people.
New cases fall in most age groups, but have increased in children ages 12 to 17 in recent days, according to data from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
“About a week ago… we were seeing a definite downward trend in cases here in Colorado, but over the last week or so that trend has reversed a bit,” Herlihy said. “We’re not seeing a clear increase, but it looks more like a plateau than we were hoping to see at this point.”
Likewise, state health officials said, the statewide positivity rate – the percentage of COVID-19 tests coming back positive – has increased in recent days and is now 7.22 %. This rate, and if it exceeds the 5% threshold, is considered a leading indicator of the trajectory of the virus.
“It’s worrying to me that we’ve seen an increase in this percentage of positivity value over the last week or so,” Herlihy said.
Scott Bookman, COVID-19 incident commander in Colorado, said hospitalizations of people with the virus across the state were starting to “go back in the wrong direction.”
The number of people hospitalized with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 in the state hit a recent high of 1,021 on September 14, then began to drop to a low of 907 on October 2. Since then, however, that figure has increased. rebound, reaching 990 confirmed and suspected cases on Thursday before falling back to 979 on Friday.
The state’s intensive care units were at about 86% of capacity on Friday, said Bookman, who pointed out that people vaccinated against COVID-19 are eight times less likely to end up hospitalized with the virus in Colorado. .
About 40% of people in intensive care units in Colorado are COVID-19 patients, Herlihy said, noting that people sick with the virus are in addition to all usual patients admitted to intensive care units for illnesses and injuries. But Bookman said some of the coronavirus patients are more seriously ill.
“They’re starting to see more long-stay patients in intensive care units,” he said. “They’re on ventilators and they’re really incapable of removing them from the ventilators and unloading them.”
State public health officials don’t know why hospitalizations have increased and cases have stopped falling, Herlihy said. But she noted that there had been a lot of variability across the state and across the United States during the pandemic, with some areas experiencing outbreaks along with other places seeing improvements.
In Colorado, she said, the Front Range is largely seeing a drop in case rates, but this is not the case in the San Luis Valley, some counties in the Eastern Plains or the southern part. western state, where new infections are on the rise.
There is “a lot of complexity in the data right now,” she said. “A lot, really, of epidemics within the epidemic that are happening in Colorado right now. “
Colorado had recorded 688,465 cases of COVID-19 as of Friday and 7,996 people had died from the virus since the start of the pandemic, state data showed.
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