Is Colorado Running Out of People Willing to Be Vaccinated Against COVID?

The latest COVID-19 statistics from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment show declines in most areas — including vaccinations, unfortunately. The pace of new immunizations has slowed so much that it raises the possibility that the state is simply running out of people who are open to getting dosed.

Here are the COVID statistics in major categories, as updated by the CDPHE after 4 p.m. February 7. They're juxtaposed with information from our previous COVID data roundup, which drew from January 31 figures:

1,276,978 cases (up 23,936 from January 31)
26,772 variants of concern (up 130 from January 31)
64 counties (unchanged from January 31)
57,977 hospitalized (up 1,094 from January 31)
11,404 deaths among cases (up 289 from January 31)
11,808 deaths due to COVID-19 (up 254 from January 31)
8,143 outbreaks (up 132 from January 31)

Four takeaways:

• The number of new COVID cases in Colorado was nearly halved, going from 44,870 for the week ending January 31 to 23,936 over the subsequent seven days. The official count excludes a huge percentage of overall infections that go unreported, as the CDPHE admits, but that's still a substantial improvement.

• New hospitalizations slid, too, but not by as much — 1,371 on January 31, 1,094 on February 6.

• The death rate among cases of COVID-19 is an outlier, bumping up for the second consecutive week: 188 on January 24, 268 on January 31, 289 on February 6.

• In contrast, the rate of outbreaks continues to slow. The 132 new citations on February 6 are an improvement over the 163 on January 31.

Daily COVID case counts over the last ten-day period keep getting better, however. Only two of the past ten days saw confirmed reports of more than 5,000 infections, as opposed to seven of ten between January 21 and January 30.

February 6 — 1,221 Cases
February 5 — 1,936 Cases
February 4 — 2,480 Cases
February 3 — 2,401 Cases
February 2 — 5,077 Cases
February 1 — 4,638 Cases
January 31 — 3,515 Cases
January 30 — 3,792 Cases
January 29 — 3,990 Cases
January 28 — 5,215 Cases

We don't know how dominant the Omicron strain of COVID-19 is right now; the CDPHE hasn't updated its breakdown of sequenced samples since the week of January 9, when Omicron accounted for most cases. But the state's positivity rate has improved from 16.42 percent on January 31 to 10.91 percent on February 6, and there are currently 198 ICU hospital beds available statewide, 58 more than on January 31.

Meanwhile, new hospital admissions for COVID-19 have receded from a seven-day average of 173 on January 3 to 114 on February 6, and the overall number of patients hospitalized for the disease is getting close to triple digits again. Here's the rundown:

New Hospital Admissions by Admission Date

February 7, 2022
81 Patients Admitted to the Hospital
114 Seven-Day Average Patients Admitted to the Hospital

February 6, 2022
86 Patients Admitted to the Hospital
116 Seven-Day Average Patients Admitted to the Hospital

February 5, 2022
75 Patients Admitted to the Hospital
116 Seven-Day Average Patients Admitted to the Hospital

February 4, 2022
96 Patients Admitted to the Hospital
125 Seven-Day Average Patients Admitted to the Hospital

February 3, 2022
158 Patients Admitted to the Hospital
147 Seven-Day Average Patients Admitted to the Hospital

February 2, 2022
159 Patients Admitted to the Hospital
162 Seven-Day Average Patients Admitted to the Hospital

February 1, 2022
146 Patients Admitted to the Hospital
174 Seven-Day Average Patients Admitted to the Hospital

January 31, 2022
91 Patients Admitted to the Hospital
191 Seven-Day Average Patients Admitted to the Hospital

January 30, 2022
86 Patients Admitted to the Hospital
216 Seven-Day Average Patients Admitted to the Hospital

January 29, 2022
142 Patients Admitted to the Hospital
226 Seven-Day Average Patients Admitted to the Hospital

Patients Currently Hospitalized for COVID-19

February 7, 2022
1,030 Total COVID Patients (Confirmed & Suspected/PUI)
979 (95 percent) Confirmed COVID-19
51 (5 percent) Persons Under Investigation

February 6, 2022
1,084 Total COVID Patients (Confirmed & Suspected/PUI)
1,037 (96 percent) Confirmed COVID-19
47 (4 percent) Persons Under Investigation

February 5, 2022
1,098 Total COVID Patients (Confirmed & Suspected/PUI)
1,044 (95 percent) Confirmed COVID-19
54 (5 percent) Persons Under Investigation

February 4, 2022
1,120 Total COVID Patients (Confirmed & Suspected/PUI)
1,070 (96 percent) Confirmed COVID-19
50 (4 percent) Persons Under Investigation

February 3, 2022
1,206 Total COVID Patients (Confirmed & Suspected/PUI)
1,162 (96 percent) Confirmed COVID-19
44 (4 percent) Persons Under Investigation

February 2, 2022
1,251 Total COVID Patients (Confirmed & Suspected/PUI)
1,195 (96 percent) Confirmed COVID-19
56 (4 percent) Persons Under Investigation

February 1, 2022
1,286 Total COVID Patients (Confirmed & Suspected/PUI)
1,227 (95 percent) Confirmed COVID-19
59 (5 percent) Persons Under Investigation

January 31, 2022
1,351 Total COVID Patients (Confirmed & Suspected/PUI)
1,300 (96 percent) Confirmed COVID-19
51 (4 percent) Persons Under Investigation

January 30, 2022
1,382 Total COVID Patients (Confirmed & Suspected/PUI)
1,337 (97 percent) Confirmed COVID-19
45 (3 percent) Persons Under Investigation

If only the CDPHE's vaccine data dashboard offered as much good news. For the week ending February 6, the totals for people fully immunized against COVID-19 and those who've received at least one dose bumped up by 12,000 or so, way down from the increases of 41,430 and 60,473, respectively, on January 31. Meanwhile, doses of Pfizer and Moderna were in the low hundreds on February 6, and Johnson & Johnson injections barely exceeded two dozen:

3,927,711 people fully immunized in Colorado (up 12,659 from January 30)
4,385,797 people immunized with at least one dose (up 12,239 from January 30)
287 people vaccinated on February 6 with Pfizer vaccine (down 312 from January 30); 861 immunizations with Pfizer vaccine reported February 6 but administered on an earlier date (down 65 from January 30)
438 people immunized on February 6 with Moderna vaccine (down 83 from January 30); 1,071 immunizations with Moderna vaccine reported February 6 but administered on an earlier date (up 386 from January 30)
28 people vaccinated on February 6 with Janssen (J&J) vaccine (down 3 from January 30); 27 immunizations with Janssen vaccine reported February 6 but administered on an earlier date (up 7 from January 30)

The overall CDPHE numbers for vaccinations have seen little improvement for weeks. Children ages five and under have not yet been approved for inoculations, but 80.7 percent of those over that age have gotten at least one dose, and 72.3 percent are considered fully immunized. But immunizations for kids are much less impressive: Only 37.8 percent of those ages five to eleven have received even one dose, and just 29.8 percent are fully immunized. Meanwhile, 68.5 percent of those ages twelve to seventeen have gotten a first dose, and 60.9 percent are fully immunized, but only 26.5 percent of them have received booster shots. And boosters for all Coloradans ages twelve and older are stuck at 50.7 percent, which means that nearly half of the state's residents haven't bothered getting boosted.

Back in April 2021, Governor Jared Polis guessed that 10 percent of Coloradans would never be vaccinated. Around ten months later, that prediction looks to be way low.