COVID-19 Forecast for El Paso County — March 15
Plus, our resident microbiologist on vaccine equity
Good morning, and happy Monday. On this pandemic date last year, presenters and guests had until the end of the day to register for the 17th annual Colorado Springs Undergraduate Research Forum (CSURF). (This year, the CSURF will be held virtually starting April 18.)
Today, Phoebe Lostroh returns to give her weekly COVID-19 forecast for El Paso County and to explain who deserves the praise for the United States’ progress in its vaccine rollout plan. 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 recapped a year of pandemic-related announcements, and discussed how some professors have handled larger class sizes.
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 March 14.
⚖️ How her predictions last week shaped up: March 13 is the last day of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report week 10 in the national public health calendar. It is the 53rd week since the first case was detected in El Paso County. Since March 13, 746 El Paso County residents have died of COVID-19. Last week, Lostroh predicted between 943 and 1,030 new cases in El Paso County for the week ending March 11. There were actually 794 cases.
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 March 18, Lostroh predicts El Paso County will see between 640-1,074 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 X’s, while the other symbols provide estimates based on curve-fitting for the most recent 21, 14, and seven days. The orange, yellow, and blue lines at the top of the graph show when El Paso County had orange, yellow, or blue-level safety precautions in effect. The orange, yellow and blue-dotted lines show the new thresholds for the Dial 2.0 levels. The triangles indicate when the respective phase for vaccination was introduced. As of March 14, the incidence per 100,000 people in El Paso County over the last seven days was 120.8.
“We have a chance of crossing into the blue zone for the rolling seven-day incidence in the next one to two weeks,” Lostroh said.
Average seven-day rolling percent positivity in El Paso County with testing
🗝️ Key points: The seven-day rolling percent positivity for nasopharyngeal tests for viral nucleic acids is plotted in dark blue diamonds, while the daily percent positivity is plotted in light blue diamonds. The timing of orange, yellow, and blue-level safety precautions is indicated by the orange, yellow, and blue lines near the top of the graph. As of March 14, the percent positivity in El Paso County was 4.8%.
COVID-19 vaccinations in El Paso County
🗝️ Key points: The vaccine dashboard tracks county vaccine distribution. Purple symbols correspond to the left axis, plotting doses administered, while red symbols correspond to the right axis, plotting vaccine series completed. El Paso County has administered a total of 190,617 doses. Some of those doses were the first shot someone received, while others were the second shot to complete the vaccine series. 71,478 people have received both shots and thus have completed the immunization series.
“Estimates to achieve herd immunity range from 70-90% fully immunized,” Lostroh said. “At this time, the Pfizer vaccine is approved for use in 16 and 17-year-olds but there is no vaccine approved for younger children, who comprise approximately 25% of the county population.”
Q-and-A with Lostroh: Our resident microbiologist on the national vaccination timeline
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
CC COVID-19 Reporting Project: A Colorado doctor was recently told by the governor’s office to stop prioritizing vaccinating residents in specific zip codes, which he had been doing in order to “vaccinate the poorest people.” What do you think of this decision, and how important do you think vaccine equity is, especially given the rate at which Coloradans in certain area codes have been vaccinated compared to the whole state?
Lostroh: I really have sympathy for this doctor. He knows perfectly well that the population he serves is at higher risk of serious disease and exposure in the first place, and that the state guidelines don’t take refugee status into account, or really even poverty into account, and just go by age and occupation for the most part. I think that those priorities fall along racialized and citizenship lines, so I have a lot of sympathy for what he’s doing. I understand why he would take things into his own hands and start vaccinating the community that needs it so much, and I am unhappy to hear that the health department shut him down. I think he had a good thing going on. This whole response has been so uncoordinated until recently when President Joe Biden took over, so I think it’s not surprising that people who have professional expertise are kind of feeling like, ‘I'll just do this myself because clearly, the people in charge are not catching on to what needs to be done, but I know what needs to be done and I’m just going to do it.’ So I kind of have sympathy for that position — but at the same time, we can’t just have everybody deciding to give out the vaccine to only their friends. So, it’s a really touchy situation.
CCRP: On March 11, Biden said he would be directing all states to “make all American adults eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine by May 1.” To what extent do you agree with the president’s timeline, and what will be needed from states to fulfill it?
Lostroh: I think his timeline is very ambitious and it would be great if it works out. We’ve had shortages of basic lab supplies this whole time, from pipette tips to gloves, and so we need to address those kinds of supply issues. I’m also not sure how we’re doing on the little glass vials that can withstand very cold temperatures, but there’s probably going to be some logistical issues that need to be solved to get there in May. And then I think we’re going to have to start doing things like that doctor is doing, which is going to neighbourhoods where we know that there are people who would probably like to be vaccinated but can’t, or have not been able to be for whatever reason. In vaccinating, like with eradicating smallpox, you don’t just sit in your clinic and wait for people to come to you, you send people out into communities and they knock on doors and say, ‘has everyone here been vaccinated? If not, I have the vaccine with me — would you like it right now?’ And so I think that’s the kind of strategy that is going to be needed. At some point, we’ll need lots of volunteers, lots and lots of volunteers.
CCRP: On March 10, the office of former President Donald Trump released a statement claiming that Americans should remember that Trump got the national vaccine distribution process rolling. Do you think one White House administration deserves more credit than another in getting Americans vaccinated against COVID-19?
Lostroh: In the vaccine rollout process, almost every aspect of it was just handled by scientists and people in the pharmaceutical industry, without any meddling from anybody’s government or anybody’s administration. There were hundreds of years of investment in basic biomedical science that went into the technologies to make all the vaccines that have emergency-use authorization and to produce all the procedures to get them approved and store them, ship them, etc. And so I actually don’t think that any one administration gets the credit for developing the vaccine because it’s built on so many decades of work by literally thousands of people. That said, I think that both in terms of vaccination and in terms of controlling transmission and therefore controlling replication of the virus, the Trump administration intentionally did not take the virus seriously. They started racist rumors that named the virus after the first place that it was discovered, they went out of their way to not wear masks, and they had super-spreader events. Although the Biden administration has only stepped in for just under two months, I think that their leadership on the whole pandemic has been more informed by science and that they are supporting the recommendations of scientists, medical doctors, and professionals in education. And so I think that even though I wouldn’t hold the Biden administration more responsible for the vaccine rollout than the Trump administration at this point, I would say that they have been doing a better job overall.
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.
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