COVID-19 Forecast for El Paso County — Oct. 19
Plus, our resident microbiologist on her ideal COVID-19 vaccine
Good morning, and happy Monday. On this pre-pandemic date last year, “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” was showing at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College. (The Fine Arts Center will reopen its museum in a limited capacity in the next few weeks, while the theatre and art school will continue online programming until further notice.)
Today, Phoebe Lostroh returns to give her weekly COVID-19 forecast for El Paso County and to explain what a recently paused COVID-19 vaccine trial might mean for vaccine production. 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.
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➡️ICYMI: On Wednesday, we talked to some CC professors about their experiences with tent-teaching. We also rounded up spring semester plans at some liberal arts colleges.
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. 16.
⚖️ How her predictions last week shaped up: Oct. 17 is the last day of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report week 42 in the national public health calendar. It is the 32nd week since the first case was detected in El Paso County. Since March 13, 188 El Paso County residents have died of COVID-19. Last week, Lostroh predicted about 8,080 cumulative cases reported as of Oct. 15. There were actually 8,267 cumulative cases.
“The local situation has become worse,” Lostroh said. “I advise everyone to resume stay-at-home conditions until the county implements some mitigation efforts and those efforts have a chance to work.”
About a month ago, Colorado announced new county COVID-19 guidelines based on new cases, percent positivity, and impact on hospitalizations.
There are five levels:
Protect Our Neighbors
Safer at Home 1: Cautious
Safer at Home 2: Concern
Safer at Home 3: High Risk
Stay at Home
El Paso County crossed from “Safer at Home 1: Cautious” into “Safer at Home 2: Concern” on Oct. 3, and Lostroh predicts the county will remain there for a few more days. Unless significant public health measures are taken, the county will likely cross into “Safer at Home 3: High Risk” around Oct. 20.
Predicted cumulative reported cases in El Paso County
🗝️ Key points: This week, Lostroh used an exponential curve fitted to the most recent five days (Sunday–Thursday) for her “worst-case” scenario. For the next week, El Paso County is likely to see between 8,869 and 8,967 cumulative reported cases on Oct. 22. The percent positivity is rising and has been above 5% for the four of the most recent nine days, so the 14-day rolling percent positivity is likely to exceed 5% soon. El Paso County’s hospitalizations are also increasing. Reported COVID-19 deaths are not increasing but there is typically a lag of at least a week before deaths attributed to COVID-19 enter into the record, and this lag can be worse during an outbreak.
Reported daily cases per 100,000 people using a 14-day rolling window
🗝️ Key points: The reported daily cases normalized per 100,000 people in El Paso County are represented by black triangles. Red triangles represent the worst-case estimate, grey triangles the intermediate estimate, and blue triangles the estimate if each new case gives rise to only one more case.
The zones are based on recommendations from The Harvard University Global Health Institute.
Green Zone: PK–12 and higher-ed meet in person.
Yellow Zone: PK–8 meet in person; 9–12, colleges, and universities use hybrid learning to maintain de-densified classrooms.
Orange Zone: PK–5 meet in person; 6–12, colleges, and universities use virtual learning.
Lostroh expects El Paso County to remain in the Orange Zone for the next month unless the county enacts significant public health and hygiene measures.
14-day incidence annotated with changes in local policy and activities
🗝️ Key points: The reported cases normalized per 100,000 people in El Paso County are represented by black Xs. Horizontal boxes filled with a gradient from white to purple indicate the six weeks following an event that is predicted to increase social mixing and thus viral spread. The thresholds for three of the state’s five COVID-19 levels are marked with dashed horizontal lines.
El Paso County has experienced three waves, Lostroh said. The first two waves were small and of approximately equal duration, and although the first one occurred when the county did not have sufficient testing available, the stay-at-home order and contact tracing reversed the wave. The second wave was probably triggered by people feeling confident enough to start venturing out and occurred about a month and a half after the first one. Contact tracing, isolation for cases, and quarantine for exposed people awaiting test results, contained this wave. The third wave peaked at the end of July and put some strain on the local health system. In addition to contact tracing, isolation, and quarantine, public health measures such as a state-wide mask mandate and a local reduction in the hours that bars could serve alcohol helped reverse that wave. El Paso County is now climbing up the fourth wave, and it looks like the county will exceed the July peak in about three days, which is about 3-4 days faster than Lostroh predicted last week.
Q-and-A with Lostroh: Our resident microbiologist on research linking blood type with COVID-19 susceptibility
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
CC COVID-19 Reporting Project: What would an ideal COVID-19 vaccine look like to you?
Lostroh: I am hoping for a mucosal vaccine because it’s a mucosal pathogen. The mucosal layer is just the epithelial layer everywhere in your body that is nice and moist and exposed to the outside world. Your immune system on those surfaces is different from your immune system in your blood, to some degree, so I’m hoping that after we get through this crisis, there will be a good nasal or even edible vaccine that will vaccinate at the mucosal surface rather than through the bloodstream. I think that will be more efficacious, but that’s just a guess. It’s just an educated guess.
CCRP: Researchers recently paused another vaccine trial. What does this mean for a possible vaccine?
Lostroh: It’s very often the case that the fastest vaccine is not the best. It’s just the fastest. ... You really need a good safety profile for vaccines because you are administering them to healthy people. On the other hand, when you’re in the middle of an outbreak, there might be a tolerance for certain adverse effects that you would not tolerate if you weren’t in a pandemic, so we’ll just have to see. I don’t think that the first vaccine we get is going to be the best vaccine. I think the safety processes in the United States are good safety processes, and I think that the safety processes in Japan and the EU are good. When Japan and the EU, and hopefully the United States, all say there’s a vaccine that’s safe, I will believe it, and I will think that it’s safe.
CCRP: To what extent should people with Type O blood get excited about a study showing they may be less susceptible to COVID-19 infections?
Lostroh: I think several studies have looked at blood group and COVID in a variety of different ways at this point, and all of them are finding a small trend in the direction ... that somebody with Type O is a little bit protected and somebody with other types, maybe especially AB, is a little bit more susceptible to more severe disease. All of these effects are very small compared with the effects of every other condition that we know about such as age and the comorbidities, and so people who have type AB blood should not be any more alarmed than they already are. ... The effect is very small, and it’s of scientific interest. Blood groups are quite mysterious. Interesting things are linked to lots of infectious diseases to a small degree in some cases and to a large degree in others. I think it’s going to be an interesting thing for people to study, but it’s going to be more of an academic understanding, rather than some kind of breakthrough that’s going to lead to a better clinical course or like tailored treatments for people with different blood groups.
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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