Colorado hit another new record for COVID-19 hospitalizations Monday, showing the fall surge isn’t over despite some encouraging signs.
Statewide, 1,834 people were hospitalized with confirmed cases of COVID-19 on Monday, and 106 others were receiving hospital care for COVID-like symptoms but had test results pending.
The rate of growth in hospitalizations has slowed in recent days, which is a positive sign, but it would be better to see the number falling before people who may have been infected on Thanksgiving start to become seriously ill, said Julie Lonborg, spokeswoman for the Colorado Hospital Association.
“These surges are going to build on each other, so to the extent that we get any time in between (surges) to slow it down, it’s a big help,” she said.
Typically, it takes at least a week for any impact from a holiday to show up, because most people don’t develop symptoms immediately. Hospitalizations tend to rise about two weeks after an event where people spread the virus, and deaths may not show up in the data until a month or longer after the event.
The number of infected people is still increasing, but not as fast as it was a week or two ago, said Beth Carlton, an associate professor of environmental and occupational health at the Colorado School of Public Health. That means the odds that any particular person you meet is infected will continue to increase, even as the trajectory shows some signs of flattening, she said.
“The foot is still on the accelerator, but we’re not accelerating as fast,” she said.
Hospitals are managing so far by sharing staff with sister facilities or calling on agencies they contract with, Lonborg said. They also are transferring patients to facilities that have more space and staff available, she said.
About 79% of intensive-care beds and 81% of beds for general medical care were in use Monday, which was about the same as a week earlier. A 2017 report from the Colorado Hospital Association showed that on a typical day, about half of all hospital beds in the state were full. It didn’t break out how many intensive-care beds were in use in normal times.
Roughly one-third of hospitals reporting to the state said they could have a staffing shortage in the next week, which was about the same as a week earlier. Nurses and health officials have said they expect short staffing to become a problem before hospitals run out of beds or equipment, such as ventilators.
The number of cases reported to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment last week was down, from 34,457 the previous week to 28,412. The number of tests performed also fell, which may reflect that some testing sites were closed Thursday, or people may have been reluctant to get tested on a holiday weekend, Carlton said. The rate of tests coming back positive increased slightly, to 11.7%, suggesting the state isn’t finding all cases.
It’s difficult to determine the trajectory of deaths, because reports can be delayed up to two weeks. The week ending Nov. 15 continued a pattern of increases since early October. With 211 deaths, it was the highest total in a week since late April.
The most recent projections from the state health department and School of Public Health, released Wednesday, suggested Colorado may avoid going over hospital capacity this winter, but there is substantial uncertainty about whether hospitalizations will slow down or speed up again. Infections continued to increase in all regions of the state as of the middle of last week.
We won’t know if Thanksgiving gatherings seeded new cases until at least the middle of next week, Carlton said. It’s somewhat difficult to project, because holiday travel happened at the same time that counties were tightening their restrictions and the average person seemed to be decreasing their contacts, she said.
“There are two competing forces here,” she said.
Since March, 232,905 people have tested positive for the virus and 13,488 have been hospitalized. As of Monday, 2,656 died of the virus and 381 others have died with it.
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