{"id":45499,"date":"2021-07-30T16:30:00","date_gmt":"2021-07-30T22:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/as-coronavirus-cases-rise-again-not-even-colorados-most-vaccinated-counties-have-been-spared\/"},"modified":"2021-07-30T22:30:00","modified_gmt":"2021-07-30T22:30:00","slug":"as-coronavirus-cases-rise-again-not-even-colorados-most-vaccinated-counties-have-been-spared","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/as-coronavirus-cases-rise-again-not-even-colorados-most-vaccinated-counties-have-been-spared\/","title":{"rendered":"As coronavirus cases rise again, not even Colorado\u2019s most-vaccinated counties have been spared"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A
A masked installation by artists Darrell E. Ansted and Cynthia Allen outside of Mollys Spirits in Lakeside on May 2, 2021. (Eric Lubbers, The Colorado Sun)<\/span>Eric Lubbers\/The Colorado Sun<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

As you rub your neck from the public-health whiplash that occurred this week when federal officials recommended that many people vaccinated against the coronavirus go back to wearing masks, consider this dizzying detail:<\/p>\n

Residents of some of the most-vaccinated counties in Colorado \u2014 the places that state officials have lauded as doing the best job in working to stop the virus \u2014 are now being urged to resume donning that most prominent of pandemic precautions. Residents of some of the least-vaccinated counties in Colorado are not.<\/p>\n

This seemingly incongruous scenario is due to the pandemic taking yet another surprising turn in Colorado<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that people in areas with lots of new coronavirus cases resume wearing masks when around others indoors. The guidance puts the threshold for mask-wearing at 50 new cases per every 100,000 people over the previous week or at a test-positivity rate of at least 8%.<\/p>\n

A month or two ago in Colorado, a county\u2019s vaccination rate was a somewhat reliable predictor of what its coronavirus case rate would be. Counties with higher vaccination rates generally had lower case rates, and counties being hit hard with surges of infections \u2014 Mesa County was a frequently cited example \u2014 often had lower vaccination rates.<\/p>\n

But since then, the fearsomely transmissible delta variant has exploded across the state. It is now believed to account for 95% of new cases in Colorado, having virtually squeezed out all competing variants. Around 685 new coronavirus infections are being reported a day in Colorado right now \u2014 numbers not seen since late-May, when the state was on the downward slope from its previous case surge. Hospitalizations are also ticking upward, though more slowly.<\/p>\n

And the correlation between vaccination rate and case rate has broken down.<\/p>\n

Read more at The Colorado Sun<\/div>\n

The Colorado Sun is a reader-supported, nonpartisan news organization dedicated to covering Colorado issues. To learn more, go to coloradosun.com.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"People
People register March 25 during the Southern Ute Indian Tribe vaccination event at Sky Ute Casino Resort Event Center. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

local health officials have had a mixed response to new federal guidance urging vaccinated people to start wearing masks again<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45500,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[685,28,445],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-45499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-coronavirus-covid-19","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45499\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45499"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=45499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}