COVID-19 Forecast for El Paso County — Oct. 12
Plus, our resident microbiologist on the White House outbreak and 'superspreader' events
Good morning, and happy Monday. On this pre-pandemic date last year, Colorado Springs children were attending the first day of the Cool Science Festival at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. (The first day is virtual this year.)
Today, Phoebe Lostroh returns to give her weekly COVID-19 forecast for El Paso County and to explain what may cause a coronavirus “superspreader” event. Lostroh is a professor of molecular biology at Colorado College on scholarly leave who is serving as the program director in Genetic Mechanisms, Molecular and Cellular Biosciences at the National Science Foundation.
➡️ICYMI: On Wednesday, we talked to two members of a Colorado College group working to create a cohort-living model for students on campus. We also spoke to three CC professors leading an adjunct course about creativity and problem-solving during the pandemic.
Phoebe’s Forecasts
NOTES: These forecasts represent her own opinion and not necessarily those of the National Science Foundation or Colorado College. She used the public El Paso County dashboard for all data. Lostroh prepared these forecasts on Oct. 11.
⚖️ How her predictions last week shaped up: Oct. 10 is the last day of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report week 41 in the national public health calendar. It is the 31st week since the first case was detected in El Paso County. Since March 13, 184 El Paso County residents have died of COVID-19. Last week, Lostroh predicted between 7,330 and 7,349 cumulative cases reported as of Oct. 8, with 7,566 cumulative cases as the “worst-case scenario.” There were actually 7,572 cumulative cases.
“The local situation has become much worse,” Lostroh says. “Perhaps the Labor Day holiday; making the last call for alcohol at local bars one hour later until midnight; increasing face-to-face courses for grades K-12 locally; and large university-related outbreaks in Boulder and Fort Collins three weeks ago have combined to put us back on a poor trajectory.”
Predicted cumulative reported cases in El Paso County
🗝️ Key points: For next week, Lostroh predicts El Paso County is likely to see around 8,080 total reported cases as of Oct. 15. Looking at a five-day rolling window shows that percent positivity has doubled in the past four weeks to 4%, and the total number of tests has tripled. Because the percent positivity has increased recently, Lostroh expects an increasing number of reported cases for the next few weeks unless people make changes in behavior to decrease social mixing.
14-day incidence annotated with changes in local policy and activities
🗝️ Key points: The state of Colorado uses five levels of pandemic severity to inform guidance for businesses, places of worship, and events. The yellow dotted line on this graph shows the threshold between “Safer at Home 1: Cautious” and “Safer at Home 2: Concern,” while the orange dotted line shows the threshold between “Safer at Home 2: Concern” and “Safer at Home 3: High Risk.” From Sept. 15 to Oct. 2, all of Colorado Springs’ metrics were within the “Safer at Home 1: Cautious” level, which enabled all of the county variances to remain in place. But since Oct. 3, the local 14-day incidence per 100,000 people has exceeded 75, pushing the county into the next level, and Lostroh predicts it will continue rising for the next three weeks. El Paso County reached its highest peak incidence around July 30 following a long upward trajectory. Today’s trends predict that El Paso County will exceed this peak about one week before Halloween, Lostroh says.
Cumulative COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths in El Paso County
🗝️ Key points: The ratio between cases, hospitalizations, and deaths has been fairly constant for several months. If that ratio stays constant, Lostroh predicts El Paso County will have about 100 more hospitalizations and 25-30 deaths in the next two weeks.
Q-and-A with Lostroh: Our resident microbiologist on why losing your sense of smell or taste because of COVID-19 can linger for months
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
CC COVID-19 Reporting Project: What might cause a loss or distortion of some COVID-19 patients’ sense of smell and/or taste?
Lostroh: I know for sure that it’s thought to replicate in the tissue surrounding the nervous ends that provide the sense of smell, and I know smell and taste are really heavily interrelated. So what I have read is that people who lose their sense of taste, it’s usually actually a secondary effect on their ability to smell. ... The nose is where most of this subtlety for what we taste actually comes from, and basically, the virus replicates in the epithelium around those nerve endings and destroys the epithelium. This is causing all kinds of sensory problems in the nasal area, and it can last a long time. I knew somebody who lost their sense of taste for three months after she had it, and she said, ‘Oh, today I tasted garlic for the first time since March.’ That’s a long time, and she described it as losing her sense of taste, but the doctors say, ‘Well it’s about your sense of smell, not really your sense of taste.’ It sort of depends on how pedantic you are about smelling versus tasting.
CCRP: Dr. Anthony Fauci recently criticized the White House for holding what he described as a “superspreader” event. By definition, what can we classify as a “superspreader?”
Lostroh: As far as a superspreader goes, I have not read a quantitative cut-off. But let’s say it would be typical for one person to infect two more people. I think a superspreader can be seen either as an individual who infects lots more than that — so let’s say six people, like three times more — or an event where one person or one group of people infects a whole bunch of people, or through a buffet, or some kind of object that was contaminated. There can be superspreader events where a cluster of many people become sick, and there could be superspreader people who infect a lot more of the others. Superspreading people often will have something in their physiology that is allowing higher replication of the virus in their faces, so that when they exhale or talk, they are actually releasing more virus than other people who have been infected. That is one sort of cellular and molecular reason that someone could be a superspreader. The other reasons someone could be a superspreader is not about the biology but is about human behavior, so if you contact a lot of people, shook a lot of hands, spoke in a lot of faces, you could have sort of normal amounts of COVID in your exhalations and still spread it to a lot of people.
About the CC COVID-19 Reporting Project
The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project is created by Colorado College student journalists Miriam Brown, Arielle Gordon, and Isabel Hicks, in partnership with The Catalyst, Colorado College’s student newspaper. Work by Phoebe Lostroh, Associate Professor of Molecular Biology at CC and National Science Foundation Program Director in Genetic Mechanisms, Molecular and Cellular Biosciences, will appear from time to time, as will infographics by Colorado College students Rana Abdu, Aleesa Chua, Sara Dixon, Jia Mei, and Lindsey Smith.
The project seeks to provide frequent updates about CC and other higher education institutions during the pandemic by providing original reporting, analysis, interviews with campus leaders, and context about what state and national headlines mean for the CC community.
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