COVID-19 Forecast for El Paso County — Oct. 26
Plus, our resident microbiologist on the risks of grocery-shopping in El Paso County
To say this week’s COVID-19 forecast is not looking good would be a huge understatement.
As COVID-19 cases are increasing across Colorado, the state department of public health and environment restricted gatherings to no more than 10 people from two households on Friday. El Paso County, where Colorado College is located, is not exempt from the rising caseload, with a roughly 6% positivity rate over the past two weeks.
Enter cold weather: as temperatures drop and people spend more time indoors, experts say cold weather and dry air could contribute to increased virus spreading this winter.
Today, Phoebe Lostroh returns to give her weekly COVID-19 forecast for El Paso County and to explain her thoughts about CC’s plan for spring. 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 Thursday, Denise Geronimo ’24 explained what life is like for some first-year students living at West Edge, one of CC’s supplemental housing options. Erin Mullins ’24 talked to some first-year students about the impacts the #LoomisLockdown had on the beginning of their college careers.
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. 24.
⚖️ How her predictions last week shaped up: Oct. 24 is the last day of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report week 43 in the national public health calendar. It is the 33rd week since the first case was detected in El Paso County. Since March 13, 195 El Paso County residents have died of COVID-19. Last week, Lostroh predicted between 8,869 and 8,967 cumulative cases of COVID-19 reported as of Oct. 22. There were actually 9,416. Lostroh’s predictions have typically been within 10% of the actual values, so the number of reported cases this week is “shocking,” she said.
“The local COVID-19 cases are likely to continue to increase dramatically unless substantial public health measures to require physical distancing are enacted as soon as possible,” Lostroh said. “I provide estimations for the next four weeks because I can only hope that the county will enact measures that begin to take effect within the next 14 days. Four weeks is sufficient to determine the extent of the effectiveness of policies to reduce spread without provoking undue alarm.”
Predicted cumulative reported cases in El Paso County
🗝️ Key points: For the next week, El Paso County is likely to see between 10,383 and 10,612 cumulative reported cases on Oct. 29. In addition to the curves being steep, the percent positivity is up; the statewide situation is increasingly problematic; and the county has enacted no mitigating measures so far despite the steep exponential rise in cases. The rolling 14-day percent positivity has been above 5% for the most recent five days, while the individual daily percent positivity has been above 5% for 13 out of the last 14 days. These predictions are also consistent with the CovidActNow calculation of a local reproduction number of 1.34.
K-12 school guidance for El Paso County
🗝️ Key points: The yellow, orange, and red thresholds are based on recommendations from The Harvard University Global Health Institute.
Cumulative reported COVID-19 cases in El Paso County
🗝️ Key points: The black symbols show reported cases. Estimates, which are based on fitting exponential curves and the assumption that most of the population is susceptible, are shown in blue, grey, and red circles.
Percent positivity for nose-swab PCR testing in El Paso County
🗝️ Key points: The 14-day rolling values used to determine the level of the Colorado state COVID-19 dial policy are in dark blue while the individual daily values are in light blue. The dotted lines indicate thresholds in the dial policy and used by public health officials in most of the world. Greater than 5% is concerning because it indicates insufficient testing for contact tracing to be most effective at reversing the outbreak, and greater than 10% nationally is often associated with stress on local health systems, Lostroh said.
Cumulative COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths in El Paso County
🗝️ Key points: Hospitalizations are plotted in grey on the left-hand axis while deaths are plotted in black on the right-hand axis.
Predicted COVID-19 hospitalization census in El Paso County
🗝️ Key points: The dark blue circles show the hospital census as reported by the private Colorado Hospital Association company, while the maroon and light blue circles show the high and low estimates, respectively.
Rolling 14-day COVID-19 incidence per 100,000 people in El Paso County
🗝️ Key points: The reported cases normalized per 100,000 people in El Paso County are reported in the standard 14-day rolling metric and are represented by black Xs. The dotted lines correspond to the Sept. 15 Colorado guidelines for the COVID-19 alert levels. The yellow dotted line shows the threshold between “Safer at Home 1: Cautious” and “Safer at Home 2: Concern.” The orange dotted line shows the threshold between “Safer at Home 2: Concern” and “Safer at Home 3: High Risk.” The red dotted line shows the threshold between “Safer at Home 3: High Risk” and “Stay at Home” conditions.
Q-and-A with Lostroh: Our resident microbiologist on CC’s plan for spring
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
CC COVID-19 Reporting Project: What was your reaction to Colorado College’s plan for the spring semester?
Lostroh: My reaction to all of this for all institutions of higher-ed is that they’re all being asked to make decisions over the long term when unfortunately we really only have high-quality information about what’s going to happen over the short term. So I know everybody’s trying to do their best. I think they’re doing a great job keeping people safe on campus. I think that’s been going really, really well, and that having students back has not been a burden on the local community. I think that that has been great. Just this week and last week, the numbers in the county are going way up. The hospitalization is way up and usually what happens after hospitalization is up is there’s a delay, and then deaths go up. I think it’s unlikely that any members of our community will get a severe case and die, but I just don’t want anyone to come into a community where the healthcare system is stressed. So, I would rather that the students and colleagues that I care for were living in places where the hospital system was not stressed, wherever that happens to be. The problem is that’s a moving target. This summer, that was Colorado Springs, but right now it’s not. I think it’s going to get worse for the time being. What will it be in January, or if we do or do not have a spring break? No idea. No idea.
CCRP: You’ve talked a lot about how COVID-19 is spread through aerosols. With cases rising in El Paso County, how concerned should people be about activities like going to the grocery store?
Lostroh: The aerosols are staying suspended in the air. Everybody finally is willing to admit that. The droplets are very tiny, and very tiny droplets stay in the air, they do not fall to the ground immediately. That Japanese animation that was so gross was really good at showing that these tiny particles stay suspended in the air. The problem isn’t passing somebody briefly in the grocery store. It’s that somebody else sneezed or coughed and spewed virus everywhere, and it’s still suspended in the air, and you didn’t know it, and you’re standing there pondering whether to get the zucchini or the summer squash, ideally with a mask on. But still, not everybody’s wearing a mask and they’re not enforcing the mandate.
CCRP: What are your thoughts about some of the different approaches to creating a COVID-19 vaccine?
Lostroh: One of the vaccine strategies that I really like for COVID-19 that I think was smart because they were thinking about manufacturing ahead of time, is they’re trying to engineer a virus that grows in the same eggs that we currently use to make millions of flu vaccine. So the idea would be that the manufacturing capacity for influenza could be expanded or used to make this coronavirus vaccine. I think that’s probably a really smart thing. On the other hand, everyone agrees that manufacturing influenza vaccine still using fertilized eggs — that’s what they make an influenza vaccine in — is insane compared with contemporary 21st-century cell culture techniques. We’re at a cusp in biomedicine, where the manufacturing strategies that work for 20th-century medicine are not going to get us to the next leaps of intervention that we need for the 21st century. And to do that, we’re going to have to switch over to the ways that we manufacture things and the people who can manufacture them. I’m hoping we’ll see a big investment in that sector in the coming years.
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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