Colorado’s gains against coronavirus hit a speed bump this week, with the number of infections and hospitalizations hitting what state officials described Friday as a frustrating plateau.
“There’s not a clear increase,” Rachel Herlihy, the state’s epidemiologist, said in a press conference, “but more of a plateau than we were hoping to be seeing at this point.”
Cases are still below where they were in mid-September, state data shows. But Colorado reported more than 2,000 new coronavirus infections Thursday. Though the state has typically had lower rates of spread than the national average during this most recent surge, national rates have continued to fall and have now caught up with Colorado, Herlihy said.
El Paso County has seen a similar trend. The average number of cases is down from September’s peak, but has plateaued at a high level, spokeswoman Michelle Beyrle said. The county has seen 2,034 new cases in the last week, or about 280 cases per 100,000 residents over seven days, El Paso County statistics show. The percentage of El Paso County residents testing positive for the virus on average reached 10.96% on Thursday, the highest its been this year and a sign that the virus is circulating widely.
The number of people in need of hospital care in the county was also up this week to about 180 patients with COVID-19 or suspected of having it. The highest number of patients in need of COVID care in local hospitals last week was 175, health officials said.
At UCHealth in Colorado Springs, health care providers and nurses were working additional shifts to meet the needs of patients, spokeswoman Erin Emery said. Administrators and other non-clinical employees also picked up shifts to help at patients’ bedsides.
Both hospital systems in Colorado Springs had limited or postponed non-emergent procedures in order to preserve capacity.
Colorado School of Public Health Professor Glen Mays said he didn’t expect hospitalizations to level off in El Paso County until the number of new cases identified each day starts to drop. The high positivity rate is also a “troubling sign,” said Mays, the chairman of the Department of Health Systems, Management and Policy.
Across the state, the number of people in the hospital with COVID-19 continued to cause alarm, said Herlihy and Scott Bookman, the state’s COVID-19 incident commander. As of Thursday afternoon, 909 Coloradans were hospitalized with confirmed COVID-19 infections, along with another 81 suspected to have the virus. The numbers were down from Wednesday but remained still high compared to peaks of this most recent wave. The 909 confirmed patients in hospitals was the fourth-highest total since January.
Intensive care bed use remained higher than at any point in the pandemic, Bookman said. State data showed 91% of ICU beds in use on average over the past week. Herlihy said that as of late September, roughly 40% of the 1,519 occupied beds were occupied by COVID-19 patients, with the rest filled by the “what we would typically see in ICUs.”
Vaccination clinics
El Paso County Public Health’s offering COVID-19 vaccines and flu shots at National Alliance on Mental Illness events from 8 a.m. to noon, Saturday in the Monument Valley Park Triangle at the corner of Cascade and Cache La Poudre.
Servicios de la Raza is offering COVDI-19 vaccinations from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday at El Abogado Ernesto 518 n. Chelton Road.
“In conversations I’ve had with hospitals, there really is a significant amount of churn right now,” Bookman said. “Patients come in, many are admitted for a short period of time, and then are discharged. We’re starting to see a larger number of just kind of long-stay (COVID-19) patients in the ICUs who are on ventilators, and (providers) really are unable to get them off and discharged.”
Statewide, 7.2% of patients tested for the virus were infected with COVID-19, far above the state’s goal of 5% and the highest since January. Herlihy said that figure is particularly concerning now, as “fall is a transition time” and “it’s really difficult to predict what’s going to happen as more individuals move indoors and behaviors change.”
Bookman said vaccinated Coloradans are eight times less likely to be hospitalized as unvaccinated residents. That data shows that 76% of COVID-19 patients in Colorado’s hospitals were unvaccinated.
In El Paso County nearly 70% of residents had received at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine by Friday.
The Gazette’s Mary Shinn contributed to this report.
This content was originally published here.