{"id":52713,"date":"2020-07-14T15:22:23","date_gmt":"2020-07-14T21:22:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/new-la-plata-county-covid-19-cases-tied-to-mixed-household-gatherings\/"},"modified":"2020-07-14T21:22:23","modified_gmt":"2020-07-14T21:22:23","slug":"new-la-plata-county-covid-19-cases-tied-to-mixed-household-gatherings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/new-la-plata-county-covid-19-cases-tied-to-mixed-household-gatherings\/","title":{"rendered":"New La Plata County COVID-19 cases tied to \u2018mixed household gatherings\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Kathy
Kathy Waage, registered nurse with Mercy Regional Medical Center, performs a COVID-19 test on Fernando Basurto at a drive-up testing site in June. During the past two weeks, La Plata County reported 48 new cases of COVID-19. Contact tracing shows some of the cases are being transmitted at large indoor gatherings, such as parties.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

La Plata County reported 48 new cases of COVID-19 in the past two weeks, and Archuleta County has reported five new cases, the largest growth in cases in 10 weeks for both counties.<\/p>\n

San Juan Basin Public Health found through contact tracing that some of the cases resulted from family or \u201cmixed household gatherings,\u201d such as indoor parties, in the area.<\/p>\n

\u201cOther contact-tracing investigations have shown that some cases represent transmission within a single household,\u201d Claire Ninde, spokeswoman for San Juan Basin Public Health, said in an email to The Durango Herald<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Several people with the virus were unable to give contact tracers sufficient information to determine where they may have contracted it, which means they contracted the virus in the community instead of through travel to another location, Ninde said. However, the increase in cases in recent weeks shows people are catching the disease in Southwest Colorado, instead of through travel to highly infected areas, Ninde said.<\/p>\n

In the last two weeks, San Juan Basin Public Health has done contact tracing on 30 cases in the community. The number of contacts each person has had ranges from zero to 20, but that number continues to grow with the ongoing investigation, Ninde said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith widespread community transmission, it\u2019s more important now than ever to keep your social contacts low, avoid high-risk activities like indoor gatherings and wear a face covering,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

San Juan Basin Public Health continues to investigate an outbreak of COVID-19 at Tile Art of Durango after two people tested positive for the disease last week. Two or more cases within a 14-day period at a single location are considered an outbreak under Colorado state guidelines.<\/p>\n

\u201cGood workplace practices likely prevented the outbreak from being much worse,\u201d Ninde said.<\/p>\n

Another outbreak occurred at a hotel construction site on Camino del Rio late last month.<\/p>\n

Colorado, as a whole, has also seen an increase in cases in the past few weeks because people are starting to meet in larger groups without wearing a mask or social distancing, a spokeswoman for the Colorado State Emergency Operations Center said in an email to the Herald<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur mobility data shows that younger populations are moving around more than older populations,\u201d the spokeswoman said.<\/p>\n

The total number of U.S. COVID-19 deaths reported early Tuesday was 135,615. The number of confirmed cases around the world exceeded 13 million this week, with the U.S. topping out at 3.3 million cases. About 61,000 new cases were reported Monday.<\/p>\n

Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, called for a \u201cstep back\u201d in reopenings across the U.S. during a talk with the dean of Stanford\u2019s medical school, according to The Associated Press.<\/p>\n

Gov. Jared Polis announced the re-closure of bars in Colorado at the end of June, signaling he is prepared to ask businesses to step back if they are contributing to the rise in cases.<\/p>\n

While Southwest Colorado has only a fraction of the cases northern New Mexico is experiencing, Ninde said it remains important to avoid large gatherings, wear a mask and wash hands frequently.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know how hard it is to keep going with them (these precautions) for so long, but now is not the time to give up on these practices,\u201d Ninde said. \u201cThey will keep us safe.\u201d<\/p>\n

ehayes@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

An earlier version of this story erred in saying some COVID-19 cases were tied to parties. San Juan Basin Public Health said cases were tied to \u201cmixed household gatherings.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Contact tracing reveals some transmission within single households<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":52714,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[685,28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-52713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-coronavirus-covid-19","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52713","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=52713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52713\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52713"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=52713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}