COVID-19 Forecast for El Paso County — Feb. 8
Plus, our resident microbiologist on Colorado’s updated dial
Good morning, and happy Monday. On this pre-pandemic date in 2020, Colorado College’s men’s hockey team tied 2-2 against St. Cloud State University, but won a National Collegiate Hockey Conference point in the overtime shootout. (This season, the Tigers faced two quarantines, forcing them to delay their start to the season and games against the University of Denver and the University of Nebraska-Omaha.)
Today, Phoebe Lostroh returns to give her weekly COVID-19 forecast for El Paso County, and to explain Colorado’s new dial framework. 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 explained CC’s academic calendar for next year, and what senior capstone projects are like during a pandemic.
🔊Colorado’s new dial framework
If you’re having trouble keeping track of El Paso County’s level in Colorado’s COVID-19 dial, we wouldn’t blame you.
Last Friday, Gov. Jared Polis announced Dial 2.0, an update to the state’s framework for restriction levels during the pandemic, which would go into effect a day later on Feb. 6 at 9 a.m.
The new dial adjusted Level Orange incidence metrics per 100,000 people from 175-350 cases to 300-500 cases. That meant that as of Feb. 6, El Paso County, along with 31 other counties in Colorado, qualified for yellow-level guidelines. For the most part, restrictions remained the same, with the exception of those in Level Yellow, which now allows restaurants to operate at up to 50% capacity, or 150 people using a social-distancing calculator.
Some of the percent positivity metrics for levels in the dial have been adjusted, including the threshold used for Level Orange, which changed from “no more than 15%” to up to 10%. Dial 2.0 also implemented a new strategy for counties to move between levels. Now, counties won’t need to apply additional mitigation plans to move to more-restrictive levels, and will need to demonstrate metrics for less-restrictive levels for only a week in order to move down.
The update came as local governments continued to express their frustrations over business regulations related to pandemic mitigation strategies. Last Thursday, Woodland Park’s city council deadlocked on a resolution that would brand Gov. Polis’ restrictions for businesses as “unconstitutional.”
In a Feb. 5 press conference, Gov. Polis cited the state’s progress in its goal of vaccinating all Coloradans 70 and older as the reason for this update’s timeline, and added that the new model would be the first of at least two updates to the dial before it would be completely phased out. He said future updates would be implementing additional expansions “to have events and festivals.”
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 Feb. 6.
⚖️ How her predictions last week shaped up: Feb. 6 is the last day of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report week 5 in the national public health calendar. It is the 48th week since the first case was detected in El Paso County. Since March 13, 711 El Paso County residents have died of COVID-19. Last week, Lostroh predicted between 446 and 886 new cases in El Paso County for the week ending Feb. 4. There were actually 912 cases.
“New cases reported have increased over the last two weeks,” Lostroh said.
Cumulative reported cases in El Paso County with predictions
🗝️ Key points: Reported cases are in black circles while the other symbols provide estimates based on curve-fitting. The high, middle, and low estimates are based on exponential curve-fitting to the most recent seven, 14, and 21 days, respectively, while the best case is a linear fit based on data for the last 14 days. For the week ending Feb. 11, Lostroh predicts that El Paso County will see 823-981 new cases.
Rolling seven-day incidence per 100,000 people in El Paso County with predictions
🗝️ Key points: The actual calculated incidence is in black Xs. The red, orange, and yellow lines at the top of the graph show when El Paso County had red, orange or yellow-level safety precautions in effect. The orange, yellow and blue dotted lines show the new thresholds for the Dial 2.0 levels. The slanted dotted black lines show trajectories of decreasing incidence that did not continue.
The county will remain within Level Yellow if trends do not change, with incidence rising slowly, Lostroh said. However, she also said that colder weather indoor safety regulations being relaxed may lead to more mixing of people without masks on.
Average seven-day rolling percent positivity in El Paso County
🗝️ Key points: Dial 2.0 now uses the last seven days for rolling percent positivity calculations. Average seven-day rolling percent positivity is plotted in dark blue while the daily values are in light blue. The orange, red, and yellow lines at the top of the graph show the date ranges when El Paso County had red, orange, or yellow-level safety precautions in effect. The red, orange, and yellow-dotted lines at the bottom of the graph show the thresholds for those incidence levels.
“The percent positivity remaining higher than 5% is probably a factor contributing to why the decline in cases has stopped: we are missing cases, and so infectious people are unaware and not isolating themselves,” Lostroh said.
COVID-19 vaccinations in El Paso County
🗝️ Key points: The vaccine dashboard tracks county vaccine distribution. Blue symbols correspond to the left axis, plotting administered doses. Red symbols correspond to the right axis, plotting completed vaccine series. El Paso County has administered a total of 64,352 doses. Some of those doses were the first shot someone received, while others were the second shot to complete the vaccine series. 18,672 people have received both shots and thus have completed the immunization series.
“At this rate, it will be mid-November 2021 before everyone has had one dose,” Lostroh said. “Similarly, at the current rate of completing the two-dose series, 75% of the population will be fully immunized by late November 2025.”
Q-and-A with Lostroh: Our resident microbiologist on Super Bowl parties
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
CC COVID-19 Reporting Project: On Saturday, Colorado implemented a new dial framework, Dial 2.0, as the first step of the state’s exit strategy from the pandemic. The plan allowed counties with 100-300 cases per 100,000 people to move to Level Yellow restrictions, which describes half of Colorado’s counties. How do you feel about this plan, and what will it mean for El Paso County?
Lostroh: At this point it’s a race between vaccination and virus evolution. So I think the new plan has higher risk tolerance than I’m comfortable with. We’re kind of at a period of uncertainty. The changes to the dial are huge — not only have the numbers that have to be hit to get to certain levels changed, they’re now using calculations over seven days instead of 14 days, so a shorter time window. The rationale that I heard was that most people over the age of 70 will have had at least one shot in the next few weeks, and so that will put less strain on the hospitals, and therefore the people who are at highest risk of dying are safe enough that we can proceed. I feel that neglects the fact that people of any age can get very serious COVID-19 symptoms, and that we have no idea yet what makes someone get serious symptoms. There’s obviously risk factors that put some people at greater risk than others, but for the majority of people who have no risk factors and who are under the age of 65, we really don’t understand why some get more sick than others. When I calculate the percent of people who are over the age of 65 in El Paso County, we have at most immunized half of them with both doses — and that’s if all of the people immunized with two doses are 65 and up, and that’s probably not the case. So, I hope that it’s a good gamble.
CCRP: Recent studies ranked Colorado as the fourth safest state in the U.S. during the pandemic. Why do you think Colorado is relatively safer than other states, and will that continue as it implements less-restrictive guidelines for mitigating the pandemic?
Lostroh: Well I think there’s a lot of factors at play. Here in Colorado, there are some places where you can gather outdoors, and I think that that will not be possible in some states where it’s much colder and where there’s much worse weather. So I think that could help us. I also think that recreational activities like skiing are relatively safe, compared with indoor activities, so that is also on Colorado’s side for continuing decline in pieces. But, I think that there’s uncertainty moving into the next four weeks because we’re at a tender point where people are getting vaccinated, and therefore everyone’s getting really excited about going back out. I think every individual person is making a new calculation compared with what they did before the vaccination started, and I think people feel safer than is warranted unless they have been fully immunized. You know, I was thinking this morning about how long I am going to wear a mask, and I’m not sure that I’m going to not wear a mask for a while, because I want some specific medications that treat SARS-CoV-2. That is what I’m hoping for. So we’ll see, there’s so much uncertainty right now.
CCRP: Last Wednesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci warned that large Super Bowl parties could become “mini super spreader events.” Do you foresee a surge of Super Bowl-related cases in Colorado similar to other holidays?
Lostroh: I’m hoping that in some places in Colorado it’s warm enough that people are going to gather outside and then just be inside to watch the game, but I don’t know very many people who have their television outside. There are going to be some cold weekends in a lot of places all over the country, so even if you wanted to go outside you’re not going to be able to. I think that if people are going to gather with multiple households and watch together inside there could be some spreading events. We’ll see that in the record in three or four weeks if it does happen, though I hope it doesn’t. I hope that people stick with their bubble that they established long ago. The Super Bowl has been mentioned by multiple people, including the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, so they’re all pretty concerned about it.
About the CC COVID-19 Reporting Project
The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project is created by Colorado College student journalists Esteban Candelaria, Lorea Zabaleta, and Cameron Howell 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.
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.
📬 Enter your email address to subscribe and get the newsletter in your inbox each time it comes out. You can reach us with questions, feedback, or news tips by emailing ccreportingproject@gmail.com.