Aspen Journalism is pulling together data from state and county websites, as well as from other news outlets. This webpage is updated every weekday after 4 p.m.
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What’s noteworthy in today’s COVID-19 data?
Garfield County reported 114 new COVID-19 cases over the Thanksgiving weekend, Eagle County added 64 cases while Pitkin County didn’t add any cases on its dashboard as their website has been experiencing week technological difficulties with its dashboard for a week. According to state data, Pitkin County has gained five cases since Wednesday.
The Aspen Skiing Company announced in September that its employees will need to be fully vaccinated by Nov. 15. Currently, approximately 2% of the 4,000 SkiCo full-time employees have an approved medical or religion exemption, according to Jeff Hanle, SkiCo vice-president of communications. Those employees will be required to test two times per week. “We did have a small number of employees decide to leave rather than get vaccinated,” Hanle wrote.
Over 9,000 people have died from COVID-19 in Colorado since March 2020, according to state data.
Pitkin County’s seven-day incidence rate is hovering at 155 per 100,000 on Nov. 29. A week ago, the incidence rate was at 282. Eagle County’s incidence rate also decreased from around 300 last week to 198 on Monday, according to state data. Garfield County’s incidence is around 228 per 100,000, down from 238 on Nov. 22.
Pitkin County’s positivity rate is now reaching 8.7%. Garfield County’s rate increased from 8% on Nov. 26 to 10% on Nov. 29 while Eagle County’s incidence rate remains over 10%.
Starting on Dec. 1, events in Pitkin County with more than 50 people will have to file an event safety plan that will guide them to take the most appropriate measures to mitigate risks, such as requesting a negative test or vaccination from the attendees.
Ninety-five percent of the ICU beds in Colorado are currently in use. Before this October, the highest ICU bed utilization rate was reached in November 2020 with 86%, according to CDPHE. Eighty percent of the people hospitalized in the state are unvaccinated.
Dave Ressler, AVH’s CEO, said on Nov. 12 at the board of health meeting that St. Mary’s Hospital in Grand Junction is out of ICU beds.
According to CDPHE, 100% of Pitkin County residents aged 12 and older have received at least one dose of vaccine, compared to 75.7% of Garfield County eligible residents and 96.9% of Eagle County’s eligible population. That makes Pitkin County the first most-vaccinated county in Colorado and Eagle County the fourth.
There is still a wide racial disparity in vaccine uptake. As of Sept. 28, as a share of their total population, 55% of white people and 37% of the Latino population had received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine in Garfield County. That 18-point disparity has widened since May 6, when Aspen Journalism published a story on the vaccination lag for the Latino population in the region. At the time of the story, 36% of the white population and 21% of Latinos had received at least one shot in Garfield County, which is a 15-point gap. In Eagle County, as of Sept. 28 as a share of total population, 81% of whites have received at least one dose, while 35% of Latinos have received at least one dose, which is a wider gap than 60% for whites and 15% for Latinos in May. It also bears noting that the state’s data on vaccine uptake by race includes large portions of individuals registering as race “unknown” — 18.1 % in Garfield County and 16.1% in Eagle County, of all vaccines given as of Sept. 28.
Colorado has added about 5,000 new COVID-19 cases since Nov. 26. All the cases reported in Colorado are now Delta variant, according to CDPHE.
Case counts and hospitalizations in Colorado are increasing. The state counts over 1,400 hospitalized patients for COVID. A month ago, about 900 people were hospitalized. The last time hospitalizations reached that level was in December 2020 when it peaked at over 1,800.
This winter is expected to set a new record high for hospitalization according to current modeling shared by Jordana Sabella, Pitkin County Public Health director, at the board of health meeting.
The CDC changed its guidance on July 27 about face covering for fully vaccinated people. The CDC recommends that they should wear a mask indoors in public in substantial and high transmission areas to limit the spread of the Delta variant. As of Oct. 11, Garfield, Eagle and Pitkin County are all areas with high transmission level of COVID-19.
There are now about 48.1 million cases and more than 776,000 deaths in the country, according to the CDC.
There are possible discrepancies in the data published by the counties and the state as they don’t necessarily use the same data collection techniques. Also, CDPHE and local public health departments may process and report COVID-19 data on a different day, resulting in a lag in the data.
How many vaccines do we have?
More than 4 million people have received at least their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine in Colorado so far, and approximately 3.6 million people have received their two doses.
According to CDPHE data, about 190,000 vaccine doses have been administered in Eagle, Garfield and Pitkin counties.
You can visit Eagle County Public Health’s webpage on information about the vaccines. Appointments are required and can be scheduled since Monday, Jan. 4 at 8 a.m. online at www.eaglecountycovid.org or by phone at 970-328-9750.
Garfield County
Residents need to call 970-384-7632 for Valley View Hospital, or 970-625-1100 for Grand River Health. You can visit the county’s vaccine portal for more information.
How many tests are being done in Eagle, Pitkin and Garfield counties?
How many visitors are testing positive in Pitkin County?
There have been 791 OOJ cases since July 10, 2020, according to the county’s dashboard.
Where are the COVID-19 cases in Colorado?
The state’s northwest region, which includes Pitkin, Eagle and Garfield counties, was classified on Nov. 29 as “Sustained decline.” This means that “Incidence is decreasing” according to CDPHE.
How many people are in the hospital?
On Nov. 26, CDPHE reported 1,473 patients currently hospitalized for COVID-19 in Colorado. There have been more than 46,000 people who have been hospitalized for COVID-19 across the state since March 2020.
How many people have died from COVID-19?
On Nov. 25, three people died from COVID-19, according to CDPHE. There have been more than 9,000 fatalities due to COVID-19 since March 2020.
Since March, five Pitkin County, 32 Eagle County and 67 Garfield County residents died from COVID-19.
Laurine Lassalle is Aspen Journalism’s data desk editor, where she works to catalogue and analyze local public data. She also heads our our “Tracking the Curve” project, documenting COVID-19 in Pitkin,...
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