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Mesa County was the canary for the COVID-19 coal mine, with the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warning that the delta variant of the virus is adept at and exploiting weak spots in our defenses.
It is not clear whether faster action in response to the increase in cases and serious illnesses could have slowed the nation-wide delta takeover or avoided spikes in COVID-19 in low states. vaccination rate. But the United States had a glimpse of what the summer would hold when Mesa County ran out of intensive care beds about two months before the same thing happened in parts of Texas.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report on Friday summarizing how the delta stormed Mesa County.
In just six weeks, from April 27 to June 6, more than one in 100 people living in the county tested positive, including a higher than expected number of people fully vaccinated. Statewide, the number of cases to population was about half of what Mesa County saw.
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and the CDC sent teams to Mesa County in late June to investigate why Mesa County had higher than expected COVID-19 hospitalizations and more of “revolutionary” cases among fully vaccinated people. They determined that the delta variant contributed to the increase in cases, hospitalizations, ICU admissions and deaths.
State epidemiologist Dr Rachel Herlihy wrote in the report that while vaccination is the most important way to beat the Delta, the situation in Mesa County shows that wearing masks indoors and continued large-scale testing will be important in areas where the number of cases is high.
Between late April and early June, available vaccines were about 89% effective in other counties in Colorado, meaning that a vaccinated person was about one-tenth the chance that an unvaccinated person would contract COVID-19. . In Mesa County, efficiency has fallen to 78%.
Delta now accounts for nearly all new infections statewide, and in Mesa County, it’s unclear whether people’s immune systems were less able to identify and stop delta or if the level of spread in the community gave the virus as many chances as it was linked to be successful more often.
The report included good news. While Mesa County nursing homes reported groundbreaking cases, the overall chances of residents falling ill were low. In the majority of homes with outbreaks, less than 2% of residents were infected – although in one facility, more than half were. The report did not say whether households with lower vaccination rates had more cases.
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