The state of the virus in Colorado has affected “this plateau where we’ve been bouncing for a couple of weeks now,” Samet said. Right now the data is a bit murky: there are “basically competitive factors at stake”.
Preventing the hospital system from invading has been the “North Star” for Governor Jared Polis and his team. Therefore, the sharp rise in hospitalizations recorded on Monday is likely to cause some concern.
In early December, some 2,000 people were hospitalized in Colorado, with confirmed or suspected cases of the virus. Like the positivity rate, that figure steadily declined for weeks and fell below 300, to 288, on March 6th. Since then, the figure has continued to hover around 300, before rising to 328 on Monday. The last time Colorado saw such a big jump was in late November, amid the largest and deadliest increase in the state’s pandemic.
What parameters should you pay attention to? Positivity rate, “R value” and variants
On March 13, the seven-day positivity rate, the percentage of positive tests among those that were done and averaged over a week, was 3.46 percent, according to the website of state COVID-19 data.
This is well below the most recent peak of almost 13 percent in the last two months of 2020 and below the five percent threshold used by experts as a benchmark. But it’s also almost a full point above 2.55 percent, where the state hit rock bottom in September.
The state’s “R-value,” which measures how contagious infections replicate, has remained below the key threshold of one, although it has sometimes approached that number, Samet said. If the number is less than one, each infection will cause less than one infection and the virus will decrease. More than one, and will cause more than one infection, which can lead to an outbreak or epidemic. And if it is equal to one, the disease is stable, but there will be no outbreak.
“We are at a time when we are certainly not going down as we were,” Samet said, noting that the infection rate remains above the minimum compared to last summer.
COVID-19 is difficult to control.
“He’s stubborn and dumb,” Samet said.