COVID-19 Forecast for El Paso County — Feb. 22
Plus, our resident microbiologist on if COVID-19 can be carried by frozen foods
Good morning, and happy Monday. On this pre-pandemic date in 2019, Professor Emeritus Robert Lee spoke as a part of the Last Lecture series put on by the Library Partners. (This year, the Library Partners are putting on virtual events.)
Today, Phoebe Lostroh returns to give her weekly COVID-19 forecast for El Paso County and to explain how retail stores are helping with vaccine rollout. 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, the Scientific Advisory Group talked about their high hopes for this semester and next year. Plus, how pets have helped the CC community through rough times.
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 Feb. 19.
⚖️ How her predictions last week shaped up: Feb. 20 is the last day of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report week 7 in the national public health calendar. It is the 50th week since the first case was detected in El Paso County. Since March 13, 735 El Paso County residents have died of COVID-19. Last week, Lostroh predicted between 890 and 919 new cases in El Paso County for the week ending Feb. 18. There were actually 918 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 Feb. 25, Lostroh predicts El Paso County will see between 913-935 new cases.
“New cases reported have remained about constant over the last two weeks,” Lostroh said.
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 or yellow-level safety precautions in effect. The orange, yellow and blue-dotted lines show the new thresholds for the Dial 2.0 levels.
Average seven-day rolling percent positivity in El Paso County with testing
🗝️ Key points: The seven-day total of nasopharyngeal tests for viral nucleic acids are plotted on the left in pink while the seven-day rolling percent positivity is plotted on the right in blue. As of Feb. 21, the percent positivity in El Paso County was 5.4%.
“The very cold weather on Feb. 14 and 15 led to two consecutive days of low testing, which will make the total number of tests in seven days quite low until Feb. 22 or 23,” Lostroh said.
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 105,616 doses. Some of those doses were the first shot someone received, while others were the second shot to complete the vaccine series. 31,000 people have received both shots and thus have completed the immunization series.
“The county vaccine site says that 51% of residents 70 and older have received one or more doses, as have 26.3% of residents 65-69 years old,” Lostroh said. “We are now in Phase 1B.2, meaning that K-12 educators and people 65 and older are all now eligible.”
Lostroh said that eligible individuals should visit the county website for phone numbers and registration pages at a variety of locations, including King Soopers, Safeway, and Veterans Affairs locations.
Q-and-A with Lostroh: Our resident microbiologist on how pollution could be exacerbating COVID-19
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
CC COVID-19 Reporting Project: On Feb. 12, Walmart and Sam’s Club pharmacies began administering COVID-19 vaccines through a partnership with the federal government. How do you feel about the expansion of vaccine administration to large retail corporations, and to what extent do you think this will help the mitigation of the virus in the United States?
Lostroh: In terms of infrastructure for meeting people in the U.S., we have commercial sites, and we have sports sites — what our society cares about is buying things and giant sports arenas. So I think that the extent to which we can mobilize those resources to vaccinate people is all a good idea. I think that’s the infrastructure we have and we should use it. When we bring on other partners like Walmart or King Soopers or Walgreens, there’ll be a learning curve there. It’s a little scary to sign up to go wait in line with a bunch of other people to get your vaccine but I think that they are doing their best with ventilation and that people who are waiting in line are using respiratory precautions. So I think that’s probably about the best we can do. I like the drive-through thing where you stay in your own car, but not everyone has a car.
CCRP: Recent reports have examined the possibility that COVID-19 could be transmitted through frozen food. To what extent is this something that grocery shoppers should be looking out for?
Lostroh: I think it’s important to restate the point that in our English translation, this is being described as frozen food, but they’re talking about massive packages of flash-frozen, wild-caught meat, especially fish. And that’s not the same as your package of fish sticks that you got at King Soopers. So I don’t want anybody to be especially afraid of their frozen food that they’re buying at King Soopers — that’s not the situation at all, number one. Number two, I will say that scientific opinion about that World Health Organization investigation is mixed, I think that most people think that the virus absolutely did not originate in a lab, that it’s not an escapee from a lab, but that there’s insufficient evidence to ever find out, or to find out right now really where the virus came from. I would say that the frozen food hypothesis is just a hypothesis at this time. And I don’t think there’s sufficient evidence to either support or deny that it’s spread in that particular market in Wu Han through this kind of frozen seafood. I think it really remains to be seen and we’re going to have to sequence a lot more viruses in the Wuhan area to find out genetically where the virus is.
CCRP: Preliminary studies have begun to show that communities that are exposed to increased levels of pollution may be more vulnerable to respiratory illnesses, like COVID-19. What is most concerning about this to you?
Lostroh: This problem of pollution exacerbating respiratory diseases is longstanding and, of course, horrifying. The pandemic is making us see how unequal our society is. People who study health or discrimination already knew these things but the pandemic is making all kinds of other people pay a little more attention to the ways that unfair disadvantages make literal survival more difficult for some people than for others.
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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