Colorado’s COVID-19 hospitalizations rose slightly this week, but experts aren’t making much of it at this point.
The number of new cases also ticked up a bit compared to the previous week, though the percentage of tests coming back positive remained unchanged. But the numbers are still within the general area where they’ve been fluctuating in recent weeks, said Bailey Fosdick, an associate professor of biostatistics and informatics at the Colorado School of Public Health.
“We’re keeping an eye on the numbers,” she said. “At this point, we’re not seeing anything that’s overly concerning.”
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment reported 171 COVID-19 hospitalizations statewide on Tuesday, up from 145 a week earlier. The most recent data, from mid-September, showed about two-thirds of COVID-19 patients whose status was known were hospitalized primarily for the virus.
In the week ending Sunday, the state recorded 4,593 new cases, which was 237 more than a week earlier. About 5.6% of tests came back positive over the last seven days, which was the same rate in the previous week.
Virus concentrations were rising in eight Colorado systems’ wastewater, declining in 19 and flat in 27.
The number of active outbreaks dropped to 201 on Wednesday, from 214 a week earlier. The state only releases information about outbreaks in some medical settings, correctional facilities, homeless shelters, child care facilities and overnight camps.
Nationwide, cases and hospitalizations have continued to decline, according to data from The New York Times. As of Monday, an average of 417 people nationwide and five people in Colorado were dying with COVID-19 each day, which is slightly lower than the number of people who typically die of strokes on any given day. The data on the final causes of death won’t be available for months, but about 91% of the 10,556 people who died with COVID-19 in Colorado in 2020 and 2021 were found to have died from the virus.
The state’s modeling team projects that cases and hospitalizations will start falling again in Colorado and generally trend down for the next two months, assuming another variant doesn’t change the game, Fosdick said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates BA.5 still accounts for about 83% of cases, with BA.4.6 slowly increasing its share to 12%. In Colorado, about 88% of samples chosen for sequencing contained BA.5, with BA.4.6 accounting for the rest as of the week of Sept. 11.
It’s not yet clear if BA.4.6 or any of the other descendants of omicron circulating now have the ability to cause another wave, Fosdick said.
“At least at this point, there is nothing that has been overly alarming,” she said.
Earlier this week, the CDC eased its recommendation that everyone wear masks in health care facilities, saying they only need to do so when community transmission is high. That was the case in about 69% of U.S. counties, including 26 in Colorado, as of Wednesday.
The CDC also made COVID-19 testing of health care workers without symptoms optional if they don’t have a known exposure to the virus. It still recommends that everyone wear masks indoors when the community risk level — a measure that emphasizes hospital capacity — is high, though. No Colorado counties were in that situation as of Wednesday.
The big questions for the next few months, other than which variants will establish dominance, are how many people will get the omicron-specific booster shots and whether they’ll make behavioral changes if transmission starts to rise again, Fosdick said. There’s not much data on how the updated shots will perform, though a third dose of the original formulation initially cut the risk of hospitalization in half compared to receiving only two shots. That benefit waned over the following six months.
“Overall, looking back to where we’ve been, we’re in a good place,” she said. “We’re still riding the high immunity we obtained over the summer.”
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