Chaffee County COVID-19 cases hit 500 milestone

COVID-19 cases in Chaffee County since the beginning of the pandemic has passed the 500 mark.

Thursday’s 8 reported cases put the county’s total count at 502.

In the last seven days 41 cases were reported by Chaffee County Public Health.

The county’s current two-week positivity rate stands at 5.48 percent.

The percent positive or positivity rate is a calculation of the percentage of all COVID-19 tests performed that are actually positive.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend maintaining a level of 5 percent or less.

In a press release public health director and incident command for COVID-19 Andrea Carlstrom stated Chaffee County is currently in the yellow zone on the state’s color coded dial system.

Yellow indicates a county under Safer at Home guidelines considered to be an area of concern.

Carlstrom said the yellow level is subject to change given the recent increase of cases in our county.

She said public health has submitted a mitigation plan to the state and will be implementing it as soon as it is approved.

At this time, she stated, there are no plans to move to a state or county issued Stay at Home order.

“We are doing everything we can to keep our businesses open to the greatest extent and schools open to in-person learning as long as possible,” she said.

Chaffee County Board of Commissioners recently extended its Declaration of Local Disaster Emergency to end at midnight on Jan. 5, 2021, unless further amended or extended by the board prior to that time.

In response to the statewide increase in the number of cases Monday, Gov. Jared Polis extended the state mask order until Dec. 9.

Statewide, 147,599 cases have been reported thus far for the pandemic.

Thursday’s reported cases totaled 4,591, up 1,169 cases from Wednesday.

The state’s seven-day positivity rate currently stands at 11.68 percent.

As of Thursday, CDC data showed 10,314,254 cases of COVID-19 have been reported across the U.S. since data collection began in March.

During the past 7 days, Illinois had the highest number of reported cases by state with 80,025. Vermont had the fewest number of reported cases at 267.

Colorado was 13th with 24,765 cases.