<\/p>\n
For weeks, Dr. Abbey Lara has been watching COVID-19 patients in the intensive care beds in her Aurora hospital, wondering when the next crush of the extremely sick would arrive.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m pleased to say we are not seeing the huge surge I think we were all somewhat anticipating,\u201d said Lara, who treats pulmonary and critical care patients in the COVID-19 section of the ICU ward at University of Colorado Hospital, one of the state\u2019s biggest and busiest.<\/p>\n
Instead, patients are now trickling in, one or two a day, \u201cnot nearly as many as we were seeing in the fall. It\u2019s certainly not the same as in the spring,\u201d Lara said.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not a towering wave of post-holiday season cases. Not like Gov. Jared Polis and other top public health officials feared. Not like the state saw in an unnerving pre- and post-Thanksgiving period of runaway transmission, deaths and ballooning hospitalizations.<\/p>\n
And definitely not like the tsunami of contagion seen elsewhere, such as Southern California. One in three residents in Los Angeles has been infected with the virus, overwhelmed hospitals are facing shortages of staff members, even oxygen, and the highly contagious new strain of coronavirus appears to be spreading.<\/p>\n
Colorado has seen a relative blip, but not a surge, said Dr. John Douglas Jr., executive director of Tri-County Health Department, which serves Adams, Arapahoe and Douglas counties.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe really didn\u2019t see much after Thanksgiving. Everybody was hunkered down, expecting that\u2019s what was going to happen,\u201d he said. \u201cWe seem to have avoided the worst of what we feared the holidays might provide.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, the coming weeks are seen as critical, and experts warn things can go south fast.<\/p>\n
Nationally, the U.S. has now recorded more than 400,000 deaths and 24 million cases related to the virus, according to Johns Hopkins University, the most in the world. The outgoing head of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently told NPR the nation is \u201cabout to be in the worst\u201d months of the pandemic.<\/p>\n
How has Colorado so far sidestepped the dreaded wave, especially as it has swamped other states and the nation? No one is exactly sure, but there are a lot of theories.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re asking the question I think scientists are going to spend the next decade trying to unpack,\u201d said Elizabeth Carlton, an associate professor for the school at the CU Anschutz Medical Campus and member of the Colorado COVID-19 Modeling Team that provides epidemiological modeling for the state.<\/p>\n
Likely you can chalk it up to an array of beneficial decisions, she said. That includes families who avoided traveling and gathering, or took public health guidance seriously if they did, and from top leaders who enacted tighter restrictions when things got bad and got away with it when they rolled those restrictions back as the holidays wound down.<\/p>\n
The available data seem to so far confirm that conclusion.<\/p>\n
At the start of December, almost 2,000 Coloradans were hospitalized with COVID-19, eclipsing highs from the spring. Hundreds died with COVID-19 as the worst of the pandemic hit the state. The percentage of tests coming back positive hit nearly 13%, a sign of widespread community transmission.<\/p>\n
But hospitalizations have dropped steadily in recent weeks to a bit above 800, and then flattened there. Other metrics, such as positivity rate and cases, are down considerably and headed in the right direction. On Dec. 9, 80 died with the disease. On Jan. 9, that number had fallen to 14.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you look at the number of people in the hospital with COVID-19 relative to Colorado\u2019s population, we\u2019re doing really well. We\u2019re doing much better than a lot of other states,\u201d said Carlton. Based on what researchers understand about the virus, \u201cit\u2019s a combination of policy and behavior that leads to changes in transmission.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the weeks after Labor Day, Polis and public health leaders watched as the pandemic, which had been essentially manageable through the summer after a scary spring spike, again roared out of control. Transmission, cases, hospitalizations and soon deaths all took off. It was then Polis and his team did two things.<\/p>\n
First, they moved a number of the state\u2019s most populous counties to more restrictive measures, indicated by red on the state\u2019s color-coded dial system. That hit restaurants and businesses like gyms hard. And second, they, along with national health leaders, urged families to stay home and avoid Thanksgiving travel. By early December, with vaccines on the way, he re-upped the advice that masks and distancing were the best way to control the virus for months to come.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople just need to be very, very careful this Christmas,\u201d he said, echoing similar messages from federal health officials.<\/p>\n
It seems many followed that advice.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy assessment is fairly proactive moves by the state probably mitigated the worst-case scenarios that we were looking at,\u201d said Jude Bayham, assistant professor at Colorado State University who tracks the impact of mobility on epidemiological trends and transmission for the state\u2019s COVID-19 modeling team.<\/p>\n
People seem to respond to restrictions, as well as news of dire conditions, and limit their mobility, which then limits transmission, he said.<\/p>\n
From Dec. 20 to Jan. 3, more than 572,000 passengers traveled through TSA checkpoints at Denver International Airport, compared with more than 1 million during the same time frame the previous year, according to DIA spokeswoman Alex Renteria. That represented a 43% decline in traffic.<\/p>\n
Bayham tracks mobility of residents by county through apps on phones, which follow movement through anonymized, geolocated data. His research shows visits to the state\u2019s six ski counties, their resorts and businesses, did go up over the holiday season from previous weeks. But those numbers dropped about 50% from the year before. He said a lack of snow, plus restrictions put in place by resorts themselves to limit the spread may have played a role.<\/p>\n
Meantime, mobility data shows Coloradans have avoided indoor locations they\u2019d normally visit regularly. In Denver, for example, over the course of the pandemic, trips to key sectors of the economy like groceries, restaurants, bars, retail and hotels have all dropped compared with 2019. People\u2019s visits to those locations are highly responsive to health restrictions and overall virus metrics.<\/p>\n
Because the drop in mobility leads to a decline in transmission, \u201cI don\u2019t think we\u2019ve seen dramatic rises,\u201d in key COVID-19 trends, Bayham said.<\/p>\n
Coloradans also wear masks at a higher level than most other states. Colorado is \u201cone of the highest,\u201d with more than 75% of residents who say they always wear a mask in public said Ali Mokdad, a public health researcher with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, which has been tracking the pandemic state by state.<\/p>\n
He added the state also now has one of the best rates of vaccination so far.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve done pretty well. And you\u2019re moving into the right direction,\u201d Mokdad said.<\/p>\n
Douglas, whose department is the only one in the state to track mask compliance, said early adoption has stuck. He described a mask mandate implemented in July as \u201cprobably the single most striking thing that we did as a state.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another factor in the overall situation, Mokdad said, is that Coloradans aren\u2019t the only ones who stayed put and limited their travel over the holidays; people all over the nation did the same. So why are other states, such as California, faring so much worse than Colorado?<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were in a bad position to begin with, and it just kept going,\u201d once the weather got colder, he said.<\/p>\n
Some front-line providers, who work with patients every day, say many people seem to have done their best to follow health precautions.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think overall many of our patients are taking the same precautions that are being recommended, staying at home, really avoiding family,\u201d to avoid the spread, said Dr. Pamela Valenza, chief health officer at Clinica Tepeyac, a community health center serving Denver\u2019s largely Latino Globeville neighborhood.<\/p>\n
Others cautioned, despite its efforts, Colorado hasn\u2019t yet reined in the virus. Citing recently improving data at the end of December, the governor moved dozens of counties back to the less restrictive Level Orange, despite warnings from some public health experts it was too soon.<\/p>\n
Now a new, more contagious, variant of the COVID-19 virus has been detected in the state. That same variant drove a surge of cases in Great Britain, but while becoming widespread in California, it appears to have had a minimal impact here \u2013 so far.<\/p>\n
\u201cColorado has been lucky in not necessarily seeing a surge, but the numbers are still quite high,\u201d said Dr. Tamaan Osbourne-Roberts, a family medicine doctor who serves a diverse population at a clinic in southwest Denver. \u201cI\u2019m seeing patients that have been taking every precaution, staying at home as much as possible, ending up with positive COVID-19 tests, in some cases ending up in the hospital.\u201d<\/p>\n
The arrival of vaccines should now give people hope, but they\u2019ll need to keep their guard up, said Dr. Sunita Sharma, pulmonary and critical care medicine physician at the CU Anschutz Medical Campus.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there is definitely light at the end of the tunnel,\u201d she said. \u201cI just don\u2019t want people to give up that level of vigilance because I think that\u2019s what\u2019s keeping our numbers in check right now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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