At their Monday news conference, Gov. Jared Polis and state health officials emphasized that Coloradans could control the size of a fall COVID-19 wave if 80% of adults get vaccinated, but they left out how dire the consequences could be if the vaccination drive falls short.
If the number of new vaccinations doesn’t pick up and people substantially decrease their precautions amid the spread of the virus’s more-contagious delta variant, Colorado could face another peak that comes close to what the state saw last December, according to the statewide COVID-19 modeling group.
State epidemiologist Dr. Rachel Herlihy displayed a slide at the news conference that showed hospitalizations peaking around 800 in late fall, if vaccinations continue at their current pace and people somewhat relax the behaviors that keep COVID-19 in check.
If 80% of adults are vaccinated by Labor Day, peak hospitalizations could stay below 500, meaning it would be slightly worse than the July 2020 wave, but nothing close to what Colorado saw over the winter.
“By increasing vaccination rates to 80%, we can dramatically decrease the number of hospitalizations that could occur in Colorado going into the fall,” she said.
While that’s an accurate depiction of one scenario, it omits other possibilities the state’s modeling team raised in a report distributed by the state health department Monday evening. If people relax their control behaviors more significantly, and vaccinations continue at their current pace, close to 1,500 people could be hospitalized at the peak this fall, according to the state’s model.
“That does sort of take us back into the December-January range,” said Dr. Jon Samet, dean of the Colorado School of Public Health.
In either projection, increased vaccinations would blunt the effect of any behavioral changes, but the best-case scenario is one where vaccinations speed up while people keep up precautions.
To vaccinate 80% of adults with at least one dose by Labor Day, roughly 91,000 people over 18 would have to get the shot this week and every week through the end of August.
In each of the most recent two weeks with data, about 54,000 people got vaccinated, which was a slight increase over late June numbers — though there have been signs locally and nationally of increased vaccine interest. Weld County announced Tuesday that it has seen a 20% increase in vaccination rates over the last several weeks.
It isn’t clear if recent announcements that some major employers — including the city of Denver — will require vaccinations will be enough to make up the difference.
It’s also not clear how much of a decline Colorado might expect in “transmission control” — a measure that combines all the efforts individuals and public organizations might make, including wearing masks, physical distancing, holding activities outside, isolating people with symptoms, tracing infected people’s close contacts and improving ventilation.
Last fall, control did decline significantly in late summer, as kids returned to school and some adults went back to work, which may have been a factor in the fall surge.
“We think it’s fair to say (mixing) is likely to increase” as school starts again, Samet said.
The picture is slightly different this year: more people have been vaccinated and are less likely to become severely ill, but more people are believed to be contagious than were at this time last year. About one in every 249 people in Colorado was believed to be infected and able to spread the virus as of July 26.
All projections involve some uncertainty, since they try to predict human behavior, but the latest report has to contend with more unknowns than usual.
The team’s calculations include the assumption that vaccinated people are highly unlikely to get infected and can’t spread the virus. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said last week that vaccinated people may be able to pass on an infection, though it’s not clear how often that happens. If the risk is significant, the team will have to adjust its assumptions about who is and isn’t susceptible, Samet said.
In recent days, hospitalizations have risen faster than projected. As of Tuesday afternoon, 383 people were hospitalized with confirmed COVID-19, and 72 others had COVID-like symptoms but were being tested. The model had projected it would take until late August to reach that level.
It’s concerning to see hospitalizations rising faster, especially since many of those illnesses could have been avoided if more people had gotten vaccinated quickly, Samet said. While it’s possible that vaccinated people can spread the delta variant, most spread is happening among unvaccinated people.
The virus “is doing things we hoped wouldn’t happen, and that didn’t need to happen,” he said.
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