SW Colorado sees spike in COVID transmission

COLORADO – With high levels of transmission in southwest Colorado, health experts hope people can continue to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.

It’s a different story from last year, now, more people are out and about, traveling, seeing loved ones, but La Plata and Archuleta counties are experiencing high levels of community transmission, according to the CDC.

"There’s four levels, there’s low, moderate, substantial and high. And high is if you have over 100 cases per for 100,000 residents in seven days, so currently, in southwest Colorado we see many of our counties over 300 cases per 100,000 residents over the last seven days,” said Liane Jallon with San Juan Basin Public Health.

The delta variant has also become prevalent in Colorado, and- for San Juan Basin Public Health they’ve seen many cases if not most related to this variant.

"We really want people to pay attention to some of the prior precautions before we had vaccinations widely available with the amount of COVID-19 in our communities right now, we really do recommend to mask up in public indoor spaces that you maintain 6 foot distance and you take activities outside if possible,” said Jallon.

While there are many reasons why the transmission is so high – like school starting and cold weather drawing more people indoors. The goal now is still to keep that level of transmission low.

" What we’re finding in Colorado is that our mobility data tells us that just this month, September 2021 is the first time that our trips outside of our home returned to pre-pandemic levels. So with that, that really indicates that people would love for this pandemic to be behind us, but unfortunately, we’re gonna have to take a few more steps,” Jallon said.