Colorado hits new peak in COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations

Colorado has reached a new peak in the COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Jared Polis announced Thursday, November 5.

As of November 5, Colorado reported 3,369 new COVID-19 cases in a 24 hour period, an all-time daily high. There are also 894 Coloradans currently hospitalized with the novel coronavirus, which is also the highest mark since the beginning of the pandemic. Just a week before, there were less than 600 hospitalized. The previous high of hospitalizations is 888, which the state reached in early April.

Polis said Colorado cannot afford for November to be as bad as October when it comes to COVID-19 cases. Colorado is currently averaging over 2,000 new cases per day.

“We need to live now in November like we lived in August,” Polis said, referencing the relatively low case counts in the summer. “If we live like we did in October, the toll will be immense for the people of Colorado, for our economy, and for our way of life.”

Unfortunately we see no signs of slowing or a plateau in the data and it’s likely that this increasing trend is going to continue at least into the near future,” said Dr. Rachel Herlihy, state epidemiologist with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. “We know that mortality data lags behind hospitalization data, but we unfortunately do anticipate that earth counts will also increase in the next days to weeks.”

Herlihy said that COVID-19 is circulating at a higher rate than it was in the spring. “In short, we are moving in the wrong direction,” she added.

Colorado is projected to exceed its ICU capacity in late December. “Our healthcare system will be at risk if we stay on our current path of disease transmission,” Herlihy said.

Polis and Herlihy are urging Coloradans to only interact with members of their household for the rest of November. Polis said he is “highly optimistic” that a vaccine will be available in limited quantities by the end of the year.

However, Polis avoided--for now--issuing an official Stay at Home order. Instead, he is strongly encouraging people to cancel their plans of social gatherings and limit their exposures to people outside of their household. This is in line with previous signals from Polis that suggest he favors a county-by-county approach in suppressing the virus.

The state currently operates under a COVID-19 color-coded “dial” to determine the restrictions in each county. Currently, no county is in the most restrictive red level, also known as the “stay at home” level. See your county’s status here.

The latest COVID-19 data in Colorado is available here.