COVID-19 Forecast for El Paso County — March 8
Plus, our resident microbiologist on pharmacy deserts
Good morning, and happy Monday. Now that we are officially a year into the pandemic in Colorado, we can’t refer to last year as ‘pre-pandemic’ anymore. So, on this pandemic date last year, several institutions of higher education had already sent students home, and Colorado College’s COVID-19 Emergency Response Team was closely monitoring the situation.
Today, Phoebe Lostroh returns to give her weekly COVID-19 forecast for El Paso County and to explain her concerns about the Brazil variant. 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 how the school has been getting personal protective equipment and other COVID-related supplies. Plus, what lab rats have been up to since last March.
🦠On Saturday, an off-campus student attending an in-person class tested positive for COVID-19. CC’s COVID-19 Emergency Manager, Maggie Santos, told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project that three students are now in quarantine.
To determine which students should be quarantined, Santos said the college uses certain criteria, including whether or not students were wearing masks, were exposed in an indoor or outdoor setting, and how long they were exposed for. Santos also examines which types of masks were worn and the duration and distance between students in class.
📚Our reads of the week:
On March 5, El Paso County and Colorado Springs officials encouraged residents to turn on lights for one minute at 6 p.m. in a moment of remembrance for all who had lost their lives to COVID-19 since the virus was first detected in Colorado one year ago. In support of the event, several buildings in downtown Colorado Springs displayed the color magenta, and firefighters across the city lit up their trucks.
On March 6, law enforcement officials in Boulder were met with “violence and destruction” after trying to break up a large party near the University of Colorado Boulder. During the incident, three police officers were injured and several vehicles were damaged by party-goers, most of whom were not wearing masks or practicing social-distancing.
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 6.
⚖️ How her predictions last week shaped up: March 6 is the last day of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report week 9 in the national public health calendar. It is the 52nd week since the first case was detected in El Paso County. Since March 13, 741 El Paso County residents have died of COVID-19. Last week, Lostroh predicted between 986 and 1,046 new cases in El Paso County for the week ending March 4. There were actually 949 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 Mar. 11, Lostroh predicts El Paso County will see between 943-1,030 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 while the other symbols provide estimates based on curve-fitting for the most recent 21, 14, and seven days. The orange and yellow 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. As of March 7, the incidence per 100,000 people in El Paso County over the last seven days was 130.7.
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 and yellow lines near the top of the graph. As of March 7, the percent positivity in El Paso County was 5.2%.
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 161,626 doses. Some of those doses were the first shot someone received, while others were the second shot to complete the vaccine series. 58,086 people have received both shots and thus have completed the immunization series.
“Colorado health officials are looking for volunteer vaccinators,” Lostroh said. “They are looking for people who already have some healthcare skills including EMT certification (which is popular among Colorado College students).”
Q-and-A with Lostroh: Our resident microbiologist on the Brazil variant
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
CC COVID-19 Reporting Project: On March 3, Custer County commissioners voted to ease statewide COVID-19 restrictions, opening indoor dining to full capacity and lifting the county’s mask mandate. Do you think other counties in Colorado will continue this trend, and what will this mean for the future of viral spread in the state?
Lostroh: I think that some counties will follow suit. Colorado is a purple state with blue counties and red counties, politically speaking, and I would guess that red counties will follow suit. I think the biggest danger comes from permitting evolution to continue. I mean, let alone if one of these counties gets one of these hyper transmissible variants, which they might have, we don’t have a good enough surveillance program to even know if that’s the case. And so I think it’s a danger to everyone because this is an airborne virus. And people who live in Custer County don’t just stay in Custer County, people who live in El Paso County don’t stay in El Paso County. I remember when the infections first started, among the CU Boulder students, and there were large numbers of infections, and you can see week by week just by where the cases went, that they started up there, and then just go down the whole Front Range, because we all drive up and down and have family and friends and things to do. So you know, it’s just not the case that one county can somehow be this isolated county that decides to make a decision that will affect only them, it’s going to affect everybody. So I find it infuriating. And I’m sure that it contributes to problems such as, you know, the people who work in public health who’ve been resigning, because they just can’t work under these conditions where people are defying them, law enforcement is not supportive, and they’re getting death threats. So it’s very concerning. I’m very frustrated that there’s been such intentional misinformation about how serious COVID is, and how prevalent it is, and what can happen to people who get it. There are still people in the United States who say things like ‘it’s just the cold’ and you know, ‘doctors are diagnosing it because they get paid more for COVID cases than they do for other cases,’ which is just a conspiracy theory, a flat out lie. We’re in the midst of conspiracy theory times, it’s not even just anti-science, it’s anti-empiricism. So, it’s a very frustrating situation and I’m very sad to hear that Custer County is going to do this and I’m sure that there will be other counties that follow suit.
CCRP: Recent studies have found the P.1 variant from Brazil to be more transmissible than the original strain of the coronavirus. How do you think this will impact the U.S., especially as counties and states begin to reopen in-person activities?
Lostroh: It’s pretty disturbing. I was listening to The World this morning, and they were speaking with experts in Brazil who said that they think that 10 to 25% of the cases that are happening with this variant right now are second infections, and that those people already survived COVID the first time. So it’s able to reinfect people who have survived, which means the virus is evading not just their antibodies, but also their T-cell response. So this is really worrisome. Now, the only way to get ahead of this virus is to stop its ability to evolve, and the only way to stop its ability to evolve is to stop it from reproducing. So we really need a global plan to get people vaccinated in a logical manner. This infection is not going to go away just because all the wealthy countries have reached 70% immunization. I know that there are people who are working hard on a plan. I know that places like India are producing vaccines that are more affordable, and that will be useful in countries like Brazil. It’s just that we’re behind, we’re months behind. So I’m hoping that we will start at least immunizing healthcare professionals. Anybody who is a healthcare professional in most low-consumption countries, they’re very rare. Now, there are exceptions, like Cuba has a lot of doctors, but Brazil doesn’t have a giant number of doctors per capita. Botswana doesn’t have a giant number of doctors per capita, or nurses. And so when you’re already short doctors or nurses, you really need to protect the ones you have, because it’s hard to replace that human capital. So those are all the things that I’m worried about as far as this Brazilian variant goes. I did some calculations, imagining that we had five cases of one of those variants, just any of them that are more transmissible here in Colorado Springs. And we would be up to like 80 cases per day by April, just from that particular variant, if nothing else changes. So it’s concerning, because things can get out of control quickly, with any kind of exponential increase. But with these variants, it’s much worse, so it’s disturbing.
CCRP: There are some counties in Colorado that are located in what are known as ‘pharmacy deserts,’ which are areas in which residents live over half a mile from a pharmacy. How will varying access to pharmacies impact vaccination rollout in Colorado?
Lostroh: Any epidemic reveals the problems that were already present, but that you weren’t paying enough attention to. So this is an example of such a problem. And I had never read about pharmacy deserts in particular before, but I have read about hospital deserts or clinical care deserts. And it really is an increasing problem, to find ways to encourage people trained to be healthcare providers, such as pharmacists, to live in places that are deserts, because they’re deserts for a reason, usually, because they’re not attracting a lot of young professionals to live there, because they are older or rural communities. And so I think it’s a tremendous problem. At least now you can get some medicines by mail, and in fact, some insurance companies encourage that. But when you don’t have a pharmacy, you don’t have a person to talk to to make sure that you understand exactly what to do. So that’s a problem. Pharmacists are key in vaccination schemes, as we’re seeing, and the big problem right now is that in those deserts, those are exactly the places where it’s hard for people to get access to the vaccines. These problems are compounded and not separate. So a solution is a really difficult problem. Countries that have nationalized health care, don’t have as many problems as this. I don’t think that the United States is going to go for full nationalized healthcare yet. The difference between places that have nationalized health care and wealth, versus the ones that are wealthy, like the United States, and don’t have nationalized health care during this pandemic is really stark — you can really see the consequences, just even for data collection.
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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