COVID-19 Forecast for El Paso County — Aug. 17

Plus, our resident microbiologist describes getting a drive-thru COVID test

Good morning, and happy Monday. On this pre-pandemic date two years ago, the first day of the 20th Annual Greek Festival was underway with Greek food, music, and dancing in Colorado Springs. (Organizers cancelled the 2020 festival because of the pandemic.) 

Today, Phoebe Lostroh returns to give her weekly COVID-19 forecast for El Paso County. Lostroh also explains her experience having a COVID-19 test in Colorado Springs, and what the wildfire smoke could do to the respiratory system. 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, we talked to three Colorado College students about their preparations for the November election, and we recapped the Town Hall on Tuition and Billing. 

✉️In Your Inbox: On Saturday, Maggie Santos, CC COVID-19 Emergency Manager, announced one new student who arrived on campus Aug. 14 had tested positive for the coronavirus. Last night, Rochelle Dickey, acting Dean of Students and acting Vice President for Student Life, and Brian Young, Vice President and Chair of the Prevention Work Team, informed the CC community that 155 residents of Loomis Hall are under quarantine for 14 days after students failed to follow enhanced social distancing guidelines, which means some may have been exposed to the student who tested positive. 

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 Aug. 16.

⚖️ How her predictions last week shaped up: Aug. 15 is the last day of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report week 33 in the national public health calendar. It is the 23rd week since the first case was detected in El Paso County. Since March 13, 145 El Paso County residents have died of COVID-19. 

“I have great news this week,” Lostroh says. “The new cases every week have consistently decreased for the past three weeks, so my predictions from weeks ago when cases were still increasing were very inaccurate.” Two weeks ago, Lostroh forecasted 6,293 cumulative reported cases for Aug. 14, and instead El Paso County had 5,452 cases. Lostroh attributes this decline to the universal masking mandate and prohibition for serving alcohol after 10 p.m.

El Paso County added data about race and ethnicity to their public dashboard this week.

Here’s what we know: As of 2019, 12.4% of the El Paso County population reported being Black, Asian, Native American, Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander. (Lostroh only included the people who reported their race for this calculation.) But as of Aug. 16, around 30% of the county’s COVID-19 cases are among people of color. That’s more than two times higher than their representation in the population. Similarly, 20.25% of the El Paso County population identified as Hispanic or Latinx in 2019. Among the people who had or have COVID-19 in the county, nearly 31% are Hispanic or Latinx, which is about 1.5 times higher than their representation in the community. 

Predicted cumulative reported cases in El Paso County

🗝️ Key points: Because the curve is changing so much, Lostroh based her forecast on four predictions. The “worst case” is what will happen if El Paso County residents return to the same behaviors as before the mask mandate on July 17. The “Exponential Recent and Linear Recent” are curve fits for the most recent 21 days using either an exponential curve or linear curve, which correspond to whether the local reproduction number for COVID-19 is greater than one new case per known case or equal to one new case per known case, respectively. The “Best Case” projects that El Paso County will continue to reduce newly-reported cases every week by about 13 cases a day, based on the average daily reduction in newly-reported cases for the last three weeks.

Forecast for COVID-19 cases in El Paso County

🗝️ Key points: You can see the increasing rate of reported cases between days 112-154, and the slowing increase begins after that. If opening schools for some in-person courses on Aug. 24 causes an increase in cases similar to situations in other states, the county may return to an exponential curve like the worst case and recent exponential predictions. If behavior continues more like it has been, cases will probably fall somewhere between the recent linear and best case predictions.

14-day incidence annotated with the state’s viral spread thresholds

🗝️ Key points: El Paso County has exceeded the “high viral spread” threshold since July 10 and is predicted to continue exceeding it unless they can achieve the best-case scenario where the reproduction number is less than one. This outcome is a real possibility if everyone continues physical distancing and other public health measures, such as reducing indoor gatherings with alcohol in bars and restaurants.   

14-day rolling average of daily new cases per 100,000 people in El Paso County

🗝️ Key points: The Harvard University Global Health Institute suggested the thresholds Lostroh uses in this forecast. El Paso County was in the orange zone from July 21 to Aug. 7 but is now back in the safer yellow zone. El Paso County will likely remain in the yellow zone unless there is a significant behavior change that exposes more people to each other, such as opening Pre-K-12 for in-person learning without universal mask-wearing, or exposures that occur in high-density university dormitory, fraternity, or party settings. “It’s exciting El Paso County could achieve the green zone if people maintain careful behaviors and continue testing and contact tracing,” Lostroh says. 

Recommendations by threat level, if pandemic-resilient physical and hygiene conditions are maintained in school buildings:

• Green: Pre-K–12 and colleges and universities meet in person.

• Yellow: Pre-K–8 meet in person; 9–12, colleges, and universities use hybrid learning to maintain de-densified classrooms. 

• Orange: Pre-K–5 meet in person; 6–12, colleges, and universities use virtual learning. 

• Red: No in-person learning. 

Q-and-A with Lostroh: Our resident microbiologist on getting tested in El Paso County

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

CC COVID-19 Reporting Project: You were recently tested for COVID-19 in El Paso County. What can you tell us about the process? 

Lostroh: It didn’t exactly hurt, but it just felt super wrong, like that is not supposed to be up there. So it was sort of lean back on your car and she’s, like putting in this long swab and twisting it at the same time. And you have to put it up there, twist it 10 times, and then take it out. Then she pulls it out, and my eye on that side of my face was just watering. I was like, ‘Whoa, that was not normal.’ I laughed and she goes, ‘Yeah, that’s a normal response,’ and so she said, ‘Okay lean back and breathe for a little while before we do the other one.’ So I took 10 seconds to breathe and then she did the same thing to the other side. So then you leave, you’re crying because the tear response is coming ... because they are so far up your nose. And then, it still feels kind of like even within maybe two hours after having it, it still felt like something got touched in there that’s not supposed to be touched. But you know it didn’t hurt. It was very fast, and they’ve got a good setup. There’s an outdoor site associated with UC Health, and it’s probably a 10-minute drive from campus. It was very easy to find. It’s in a big parking lot, and they’ve got all these traffic cones set up. So depending on how many people go at a time, they can direct the flow of traffic. I made an appointment online for the hour of 9 a.m. to 10 a.m., and I probably arrived at 9 a.m. I waited for maybe five minutes behind four other cars, just for, I think, a nurse who was doing screening questions ahead of time to make sure you were there for the right reason, and that you filled out your insurance information and all that. And then I pulled ahead to a different parking lot that was across the street, and I probably waited another 10 minutes for all the cars to go through. There were four people swabbing and two people doing whatever you’d have to do on the computer about insurance, etc. It really didn’t take very long, so I thought that was good. And it was not super busy, so I thought that was good, too. So it was a positive experience.

CCRP: Are people at an increased risk for contracting COVID-19 because of the wildfire smoke in the Colorado Springs area right now? 

Lostroh: There’s a physiological response mechanism where our respiratory tracts will generate more of the cells that produce mucus to help us cough and get rid of particulate material. And so for instance, smokers have more of these cells than people who don’t smoke, because it’s a physiological response to remove that stuff from the body. And what I don’t know is how the abundance of those cells could affect COVID-19 susceptibility. So for instance if those cells have the little receptor on them, then that could make people more susceptible. And also, I would think that just any kind of respiratory irritation is generally a bad thing. We want to be able to tell if we’re getting COVID-19 symptoms, and if we’re all coughing because of smoke in the air, it’s going to be harder to decide whether to go get a test or not. So just that alone is concerning. 

About the CC COVID-19 Reporting Project

The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project is a student-faculty collaboration by Colorado College student journalists Miriam Brown and Arielle Gordon, Journalism Institute Director Steven Hayward, Visiting Assistant Professor of Journalism Corey Hutchins, and Assistant Professor of English Najnin Islam. 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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