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Aspen’s Christmas season can turn red for all the wrong reasons.
As COVID-19 cases continue to skyrocket in Aspen and Pitkin County, the lucrative and critical weeks leading up to Christmas and New Years appear to be on hold on Friday as the next level of local restrictions imposed by the ‘State is emerging.
“It’s going to be very difficult to keep us out of Red (level restrictions),” Pitkin County epidemiologist Josh Vance said in an interview Friday. “People are tired of COVID and are starting to take more risks.”
Red level status would mean no food service at restaurants, no informal gatherings like dinner or holiday parties, and no indoor events at all. Pitkin County is currently under ‘Orange-plus’ level restrictions, but the number of cases continues to climb, and with them the three measures the state is using to determine the level of restrictions that apply here.
Pitkin County reported an unprecedented daily high of 30 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, breaking the previous daily high of 22 set days earlier on November 28. That’s an average of 14 cases per day, Vance said.
“If you look at our (epidemiological) curve, we have a constant slope,” he says. “And it’s progressing at a pretty fast pace… (and) it’s not slowing down.”
The three metrics tracked by the state that determine a county’s level of restrictions include positivity rate, incidence rate, and hospitalization rate.
Pitkin County’s incidence rate, based on a population of 100,000, has been in the Red level – above 500 – for more than a month and the number has been steadily increasing. According to the state’s online COVID-19 dial As of Friday night, Pitkin County’s incidence rate over the past two weeks was 844.8. According to data calculated locally by Vance, the incidence rate was 878 on Friday.
State reported data tends to lag behind local data.
The positivity rate, calculated by dividing the total number of positive tests by the total number of tests performed, once seemed safe but has increased rapidly over the past week. Pitkin County’s positivity rate over the past two weeks as of Friday night stood at 9.4%, according to Dial State, although local data puts it at 12%.
If the incidence rate reaches 15% even for one day, the state will move Pitkin County to red-level restrictions, Jordana Sabella, the county’s acting public health director, said on Friday.
The same goes for the hospitalization rate, she said. Pitkin County’s hospitalization rate has remained low, although as hospitals in Denver and the region fill up, that could change, Vance said. Valley View Hospital in Glenwood Springs was starting to fill up with COVID patients on Friday, he said.
“(The Aspen Valley hospital) will be affected,” he said. “This is the room to really drive home.”
If AVH is nearing capacity, that means there will be little or no room for regular emergencies such as ski accidents, car crashes and heart attacks, Vance said. Preserving the capacity of hospitals is the main thing public health authorities try to protect, Sabella said.
The hospital’s COVID rate was in the yellow range on Friday, with between one and two hospitalizations reported per day over the past two weeks, according to the State Dial. Local data indicated that no one had been hospitalized for COVID-19 on Thursday, although six people with symptoms of COVID were seen in the emergency room in the past 24 hours and 13 health workers affiliated with the hospital were walked out with symptoms of COVID.
“Red is on our horizon,” Sabella said. “We are extremely concerned about the numbers we are seeing.”
County officials released more details on the new traveler affidavit requirement on Friday, which goes into effect on December 14.
Vance said he believes the county is starting to see the first effects of the Thanksgiving week break, although the effects of Thanksgiving Day rallies have yet to hit.
“We are seeing an increase in the number of people traveling,” he says.
Workplace outbreaks and informal gatherings are other reasons for the increase in cases, Vance said. Public health officials have regularly attended informal gatherings of five, 10 or 15 people where sometimes 100% of attendees test positive for COVID-19, he said.
Informal gatherings are currently limited to five people from no more than two households.
Plus, fewer people are complying with face mask mandates, which is problematic because the prevalence of the disease is so high right now, he said. One in 40 Coloradans is contagious with COVID-19, according to the Colorado School of Public Health.
Vance urged people to get tested if symptoms of illness arise. He said some residents recently thought they might have a sinus infection and it turned out to be COVID. There aren’t a lot of other viruses or pathogens in circulation right now and there’s a lot of COVID, so it’s probably the virus, he said.
Pitkin County and others have established free trial sites in Aspen, Aspen-Pitkin County Airport, Snowmass Village, Basalt, Carbondale and Glenwood Springs. Information on these and other free test sites in the region can be found at https://covid19.pitkincounty.com/get-tested/.
Beyond that, Sabella urged people to associate only with members of their own household, wear masks and socially distance themselves from others. Adhering to these measures will help stem the wave of transmission and keep the economy as open as possible.
“The message I want to convey is that now is the time to double down (on mitigation efforts),” Sabella said. “They will have an impact on (the number of cases).”
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