According to Chaffee County Public Health Director Andrea Carlstrom, Chaffee County is experiencing two active outbreaks of the coronavirus known as COVID-19 in the county. It has had five new cases in the past seven days; men and women, all under the age of 45.
An “outbreak” is defined as at least two cases of COVID-19 where the positive cases are not from the same household. In this case, the outbreaks are associated with business locations, AVA Rafting and Zipline and UPS. Both are following isolationguidelines.
“We expect to see local outbreaks on a regular basis,” said Carlstrom speaking with the COVID-19 Leadership Roundtable on Thursday, Aug. 27. “We expected this all along and we’ve been fortunate that we haven’t had to deal with this until now. It will most likely be the new norm for our contact tracers.” She added that “the state data dashboard is becoming more and more of a real thing for us locally.”
The COVID-19 Roundtable was informed this week of a 26-year-old man from Maryland who died in his car in Chaffee County this week (his death does not count in county COVID-19 totals).
Chaffee County Coroner Jeff Graf has confirmed that the man left Maryland last Friday, Aug. 21, and apparently drove straight through to Colorado, reaching Conifer around 5 p.m. last Saturday. He was found dead in his car near Centerville on U.S. 285 on Sunday morning. Testing revealed that he tested positive for COVID-19, but he did not die of COVID. Given the timeline, there is little chance that he interacted with anyone in Chaffee County.
The Colorado COVID-19 data dashboard is been refined, with stages ranging from cautious, to concerned, to high risk. Right now the state has colored these stages green, orange and red, but Carlstrom said the state is shifting to a green, yellow, orange color system to go with these definitions. Colorado now stands at more than 56,000 cases with 1,931 deaths.
Carlstrom explained that “Schools [which have just reopened for in-person instruction in Chaffee County] are a different gradient – at this time we are in the green-yellow level cautious, not the yellow-orange more concerning level.”
Every Wed. the state is going to be updating our two-week incident report starting around Sept. 7, providing trends. “This is part of the dial that we see…we were already going to try to pull this off as a county, but it sounds like the state is going to have more of an active presence on this,” explained Carlstrom.
Carlstrom did make a point of expressing public health concern over the new Centers for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines issued earlier this week, which contradict earlier guidelines.
“They are now stating that it doesn’t support the testing of symptomatic individuals to the point that insurance companies won’t cover a test if a person is asymptomatic! It is crucial [to the public health approach against COVID-19] to test people who are asymptomatic people – especially if they have come into contact with a person with COVID–19.
“It seems to me that tests of asymptomatic people are critical,” said Chaffee Commissioner Greg Felt during the COVID-19 Roundtable on Thursday.
“There are limitations, but if we’re thoughtful of the timeframe, if they fall within the algorithms we”re working with, we should test,” said Carlstrom. “I have my own thoughts about this announcement but will keep those to myself and focus on what we’re doing really well – which is protecting Chaffee County.”
Chaffee Positivity Rate at 3.3 Percent
As Chaffee County moves into the weekend, the county’s COVID-19 positivity rate for the Aug. 11 to Aug. 25 timeframe stands at 3.3 percent. The county has managed to maintain low numbers across the community, something that CCPH hopes will continue with community support for social distancing and masks, as well as the following of isolation and quarantine guidelines should small outbreaks occur.
The bulk of the county’s COVID-19 positive cases over the past several months have been in two communal settings. Columbine Manor had an early outbreak among staff and residents. The Buena Vista Correctional Complex had a large outbreak among its residents and staff. Both are resolved.
The county’s new Chaffee County COVID-19 Dashboard provides real-time updates and provides the most current information regarding COVID-19 in our county. CCPH is asking for the public to be patient with this new dashboard. It was initially created by a volunteer and CCPH is now looking at a data position to manage this important public health information tool.
“It is a work in progress and there are several other metrics that we hope to add in the future. We ask for your patience as we continue strengthening this tool,” said Carlstrom.
Those members of the public who want to provide feedback regarding the dashboard can use this form.
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Hello Stew,
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