COVID-19 Forecast for El Paso County — Nov. 2
Plus, our resident microbiologist on COVID-19 autoantibodies
Good morning, and happy Monday. On this pre-pandemic date in 2016, former presidential candidate Newt Gingrich was speaking to members of the Colorado College community in Armstrong Hall as part of the Sondermann Presidential Symposium. (This year, CC’s election programming is virtual.)
Today, Phoebe Lostroh returns to give her weekly COVID-19 forecast for El Paso County and to explain COVID-19 autoantibodies. 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 spoke to Colorado College Vice President for Enrollment Mark Hatch about the number of students taking classes this semester and future plans for admissions. We also talked to Courtney Knerr ’21 about the text-banking and social media work the Tiger Audubon club is doing.
🗳Election Day is tomorrow. If you haven’t voted in Colorado, it’s not too late. You can register to vote, and vote in person at your local polling place until 7 p.m. tomorrow.
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. 31.
⚖️ How her predictions last week shaped up: Oct. 31 is the last day of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report week 44 in the national public health calendar. It is the 34th week since the first case was detected in El Paso County. Since March 13, 205 El Paso County residents have died of COVID-19. Last week, Lostroh predicted between 10,383 and 10,612 cumulative cases as of Oct. 29. There were actually 10,662.
On Sept. 15, Colorado announced five levels of county COVID-19 guidelines based on new cases, percent positivity, and impact on hospitalizations. On Friday, El Paso County moved from “Safer at Home 1: Cautious” to “Safer at Home 2: Concern.” This means bars are closed, gyms may have up to 25% capacity, and restaurants, places of worship, and offices may have up to 50% capacity.
Though the state didn’t move El Paso County to “Safer at Home 2: Concern” until Friday, the 14-day normalized incidence in El Paso County met the threshold associated with “Safer at Home 2: Concern” on Sept. 30 and continued to rise. The county crossed the threshold from “Safer at Home 2: Concern” into “Safer at Home 3: High Risk” on Oct. 14. El Paso County will most likely cross from “Safer at Home 3: High Risk” into prevalence associated with “Stay at Home” between Nov. 4–9, Lostroh said. The other key metrics in Colorado’s new county COVID-19 guidelines are percent test positivity and whether hospitalizations are declining, steady, or increasing.
Lostroh predicts between 11,864 and 12,021 cumulative reported cases in El Paso County on Nov. 4.
📢 Do we have your attention yet?
Let’s get into the rest of the forecast...
Predicted cumulative reported cases in El Paso County
🗝️ Key points: El Paso County is likely to see between 12,048 and 12,229 cumulative reported cases on Nov. 5. Lostroh predicts between 1,400 and 1,550 new cases in the coming week. The rolling 14-day percent positivity in El Paso County has been above 5% for the most recent 12 days.
Predicted COVID-19 hospitalization census in El Paso County
🗝️ Key points: The census is reported by the Colorado Hospital Association, an advocacy group for hospitals in Colorado. El Paso County’s previous peak daily hospitalization census was in July. For the past two months, the local hospitalization rate has been about 4.9%, so El Paso County can expect between 68 and 77 newly hospitalized COVID-19 patients in the next week. Hospital admissions are not equivalent to the census of occupied hospital beds because patients stay in the hospital for longer than one day, often longer than a week.
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 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.
PreK-12 school guidance for El Paso County
🗝️ Key points: The thresholds are based on recommendations from The Harvard University Global Health Institute. Lostroh predicts El Paso County will most likely cross into the red zone between Nov. 3-10, one week earlier than she predicted last week.
Q-and-A with Lostroh: Our resident microbiologist on testing college students before Thanksgiving break
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
CC COVID-19 Reporting Project: The State University of New York recently announced plans to test all students before they leave for Thanksgiving. To what extent do you think Colorado College should consider a similar strategy?
Lostroh: I think it’s a good idea to try to prevent spread from the college into the community. But, for instance, for us, we have a lower prevalence than in the surrounding community so that wouldn’t be a good rationale for Colorado College to test all of the students because we don’t seem to be a source of infection in Colorado Springs. Now, in New York City, I mean they have had a very bad experience with COVID, so it makes sense that out of all the places in the world, New York State would be worried about this issue. I’m amazed that they have the money to do it as well. ... But, I don’t think it will apply broadly to all college communities because I think that there are some college communities where the prevalence on campus and even in the dorms is lower than it is in the surrounding community, Colorado Springs being a primary example ... We always refer to ourselves as ‘being in the CC bubble’ and ‘CC isn’t the real Colorado Springs,’ etc. Well, it’s kind of interesting that our infection rate is so much lower than the surrounding community because to me it does indicate that actually we kind of don’t share that much air with all of the rest of Colorado Springs, in this case for better but usually for worse, you know, so it’s kind of a double-edged sword to have made that observation. I’m so happy for us that we haven’t had a bad outbreak and that our prevalence is so much lower. But it’s kind of a sign of just how not integrated into Colorado Springs we actually really are.
CCRP: What does news about “autoantibodies” tell us about COVID-19 infections?
Lostroh: This is a disturbing trend. Our immune systems are very complicated and have the ability to detect billions of foreign molecules — molecules that aren’t commonly found in the human body. But in order to have that capacity, there’s also the capacity to have similar antibodies that can bind to our own proteins and other molecules in our bodies. There’s this very complicated developmental process, where the cells that would make the antibodies that react to our own tissues, kill themselves off, rather than attack us. What seems that could be happening as part of COVID for some people is that the extreme cell death that they’re experiencing in some compartments of their body because of the virus is somehow allowing these immune cells that should have killed themselves off to make antibodies that can recognize some kinds of molecules found in the human body on its own, even when it’s not infected with anything. And those are called autoantibodies in general. ... I think the positive thing about the New York Times article is pointing out that now maybe we’re finally starting to get a handle on why there is long-term COVID. Maybe the production of these autoantibodies is the thing that unites all the people who are suffering from symptoms long after the virus is no longer detectable in their bodies. The bad thing is that means we need to watch out for production of autoantibodies, and that is more or less likely with different kinds of vaccination strategies.
About the CC COVID-19 Reporting Project
The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project is created by Colorado College student journalists Miriam Brown, Arielle Gordon, Isabel Hicks, and Esteban Candelaria 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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