Chaffee County hits high risk category

Chaffee County is poised to move to a higher level of COVID-19 restrictions.

Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment announced Monday Chaffee County will be moving from level yellow – concern to level orange – high risk, starting at 5 p.m., Friday.

Andrea Carlstrom, Chaffee County Public Health director and incident command for COVID-19, stated in a press release, “Although CCPH, along with key partners, did everything in its power to keep our county in the yellow zone, it became obvious, with the dramatic increase in case count of late, that we would be unfortunately required to move into the orange zone.

“Please know that if we all do the necessary work and follow the five commitments of containment, there is a chance we can move back to yellow in the weeks to come,” she said.

Carlstrom said CCPH will amend its public health order soon to reflect the new level of orange.

Monday the county’s status on the state’s COVID-19 dial dashboard was still level yellow – concern, but was following stricter public health orders.

Among surrounding counties, as of Monday Fremont County was level yellow with stricter public health orders, Gunnison County was yellow under mitigation and Saguache County was yellow. Pitkin County was at level orange with stricter Public Health orders and Lake and Park counties were orange and under mitigation.

Following Saturday’s record identification of 29 positive cases of COVID-19 in one day in Chaffee County, five cases were identified Monday for a total of 58 cases in the past seven days and a two-week total of 115 cases.

The county’s pandemic total as of Monday was 632.

Across the state 3,988 new cases were reported Monday, bringing the pandemic total to 232,905 cases with a seven-day state positivity rate of 11.2 percent.

Carlstrom said Chaffee County’s current positivity rate had not yet been calculated as of Monday evening.