The city of Colorado is vaccinated as much as possible. COVID is not there yet.

By Rae Ellen Bichell, Kaiser Health News

San Juan County, Colorado boasts that 99.9% of the eligible population has been vaccinated with the COVID-19 vaccine at least once and is among the top 10 counties across the country. According to the data From the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

If the vaccine is the only armor against the COVID epidemic, San Juan County, which has about 730 inhabitants registered on paper, will be one of the most bulletproof sites in the country.

However, the past few months have shown the complexity of this stage of the pandemic. Even in highly vaccinated areas, shots alone are not sufficient because the geographical boundaries are porous, the effectiveness of the vaccine declines over time, and the delta mutants are highly contagious. Infectious disease experts say that masks are still needed to control the spread of the virus.

The county recorded its first pandemic hospitalization in early August of this year rather than in 2020. Five summer residents were hospitalized. Three used a ventilator. Two have recovered and the third is a 53-year-old woman who died at the end of August. It was believed that everything was not vaccinated.

Those cases, and even those that did not require hospitalization, warned the county in a single integrated town, Silverton. Surrounded by the mountains of southwestern Colorado, it is a close, former mining community that often blocks lonely roads through snowstorms and avalanches.

“The pandemic is still going on,” said De Anne Gallegos, a county spokesman and director of the local chamber of commerce. “We kept thinking that it would end before this summer. Then we were thinking in November. Now we are like,” No, I don’t know when. ” “

Therefore, the county decided to go back. “We have returned to the tools we knew we had,” Galegos said. “Masks oblige indoors and then discourage indoor events.” Outdoor events such as brass band concerts on court stairs and the region’s signature hard rocker holiday mining competition followed. Pneumatic mucking and spike drive..

Overall, taking into account the set under the age of 12, 85% of the county’s total population is fully vaccinated. However, in the summer, the population almost doubles as seasonal residents roost in villas and RV parks, some take vacations and others get seasonal jobs. Next, there is what Galegos described as a “tourist tsunami.” A daily influx of people arriving from Durango on the historic railroad and a dusty jeep trail through the mountains. Many of those visitors are uncertain about their vaccination status.

The county’s two-week incidence surged to the highest rate in the state in August and remained there for most of the month. The surge reached a total of about 40 known cases, nearly the same as the county recorded during the entire pandemic, and the cases were also vaccinated.

In a small place without a hospital, many cases will be a big deal. “We are all one-man bands trying to make that happen,” Galegos said. For example, the county’s director of public health, Becky Joyce, does everything from contact tracing and COVID inspection to firing ammunition. And when the county resumed Mask’s mission, it was Galegos who designed the sign and zipped the weekend around the town.

The most concentrated COVID cases were at RV parks and indoor music festivals in the rain.

“It makes sense that people working in restaurants in RV parks started to get sick after three or four weeks of tourist jamming,” Galegos said. “And you gathered all the locals for a few nights of the concert, and it was just a triple win.”

Dana Chambers, who runs a hardware store in Silverton, was vaccinated as soon as possible. She said returning to Maskman Date felt in several ways, such as a “step back.” But companies like her need a summer tourism rush to survive the quiet winter, which is visited by just a few hundred tourists, mainly to jump from helicopters to ski resorts, she said. .. “If we have to wear a mask, that’s what we do.”

Julia LifemanEpidemiologists at Boston University’s School of Public Health, who follow the state’s pandemic policy, are not surprised that COVID can attack places like San Juan County, despite high immunization rates.

The data show that the vaccine protects against COVID death and hospitalization. However, even effective vaccines are not comparable to the infectivity of Delta. “Even in the best scenario where the vaccine reduces infection by 80%, it can actually be infected with twice as much COVID as in July,” Raifman said due to the recent spread of the virus. “It is statistically impossible to achieve herd immunity with the delta variant.”

Meanwhile, many local and national leaders, including Colorado, continue to focus on vaccines almost exclusively as a path ahead.

Talia QuandelacyEpidemiologists at the University of Colorado Denver and the University of Colorado School of Public Health said the concept of herd immunity in this pandemic was oversimplified and overly dependent. “Having some kind of goal is a useful guide,” she said. “But usually, reaching a certain indicator does not mean that the infection or pandemic disappears.”

Many scientists say COVID is because most of the world has not yet been vaccinated. Likely to stay here, Final Morphing For something like a common cold. “It will probably be a problem for years,” Quandelacy said. “But it’s like the trajectory we’re on.”

As a result, the term “finish line” used by many politicians is frustrating. Ann SoshinHe is a Policy Fellow at the Nelson A. Rockefeller Public Policy Center at Dartmouth College, studying COVID and rural health. Vaccines serve their intended purpose, rather than prevent people from really getting sick and getting infected, but that is not well communicated. “The message about this isn’t very subtle,” she said.