November 09, 2021 12:35 PM UTC

Colorado's COVID-19 Infection Rate Nears 10%

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• by: Colorado Pols

Thanks largely to continued resistance in some communities to getting vaccinated, the COVID-19 positivity rate in Colorado is nearing 10%. Colorado’s COVID-19 rates are increasing even as national infection rates are going down.

As KDVR reports:

The current hospitalization numbers are similar to trends from last winter, but beds are much more scarce this time around. The seven-day average ICU bed use is hovering around 90% or higher.

As of Monday, the state’s 7-day positivity rate is 9.49%, which is up from 8.69%. The highest positivity rate in the state over the past seven days is Yuma County with 24.9% positivity. [Pols emphasis]

Gah!

Meg Wingerter of The Denver Post has more on these terrible trends, which mark the highest infection levels Colorado has seen since last December:

On Friday night, Colorado’s COVID-19 modeling team released a new report warning that if nothing changed, 1,393 people could be hospitalized with the virus by late November.

It took less than three days to exceed that projection.

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment on Monday afternoon reported 283 people had been admitted to hospitals statewide with the virus in the previous 24 hours, pushing the total number of those hospitalized with confirmed COVID-19 to 1,394…

…“Things are tight in Colorado, in many areas of the state,” Gov. Jared Polis said at a news conference Monday. “We’re experiencing a peak right now that many other areas of the country experienced a month or two ago. We’re down to less than 100 emergency beds across the state. And there are still kids hospitalized with COVID. As we speak, 25 kids.”

Overall, hospitalizations in Colorado related to COVID-19 are highest in communities with lower vaccination rates — like, say, Yuma County.

As John Ingold reports for The Colorado Sun, these numbers point to a troubling realization: Colorado may not be able to reach so-called “herd immunity.” At all.

When Colorado’s COVID-19 Modeling Group — a team of university researchers from across the state who use mathematical and epidemiological models to forecast the course of the pandemic — last released a report, in mid-September, it estimated that 70% of the state’s population was immune to COVID-19…

…But when the modeling group released a new report late last week, it contained a surprise: Immunity had dropped across Colorado. The new statewide immunity estimate is 62%. And in some counties or regions of the state, only about half of the population is estimated to be immune to COVID-19.

Researchers are learning that immunity to COVID-19 wanes over time, which is why booster vaccinations are being recommended by local and federal authorities. But once again, the bigger problem here is with Coloradans who refuse to get vaccinated:

A study released late last month by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that people who were unvaccinated but had been previously infected by the coronavirus had a more than five-fold greater chance of being hospitalized with COVID-19 than those who were fully vaccinated against the virus but had never been infected. [Pols emphasis] The data came from a network of hospitals across the country and looked at patients who were discharged from the hospital with diagnosis codes for COVID-related symptoms.

While you can get some immunity from COVID-19 after fighting off an infection, the data shows that this protection is nowhere near as effective as getting vaccinated (sorry, Dennis Prager).

Please, people: Get your vaccinations!