Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify the first paragraph.
Boulder County reported 50 new coronavirus cases Thursday — the largest one-day increase in positive cases that the county has seen yet. The surge surpasses the previous highest one-day increase since Wednesday, when 43 new cases were reported.
To date, Boulder County has had 1,205 probable or positive coronavirus cases. Of those 174 have been hospitalized and 514 have recovered. There are 77 disease investigations in progress. The number of Boulder County coronavirus deaths remained at 71 Thursday.
The county first announced the surge in cases Tuesday. On Wednesday, the county said that there had been 108 new cases since June 11. A number of those infected had been to Black Lives Matter protests on June 4 and 5 and parties in Boulder’s University Hill neighborhood between May 25 and June 4. The surge in cases bumped Boulder County on Wednesday to the third highest increase in cases in the Denver metro area. Before last week, the county had the second lowest new case rates in the Denver metro area.
As far as how long the county’s surge in cases could last, Chana Goussetis, spokesperson for Boulder County Public Health, said that will rely on peoples’ actions.
“How much longer we continue to see new cases (ongoing transmission) depends on the ability of each person involved in the outbreak to stay isolated or quarantined and be forthcoming about their close contacts with our disease investigators,” Goussetis wrote in an email.
Also Thursday officials said that due to the increase in cases and Gov. Jared Polis’ hopes for the state to transition to Protect Our Neighbors, Boulder County will not be seeking a variance on the state’s Safer at Home restrictions at this time. Goussetis noted that communities can’t apply to the state for a variance, if they have increasing cases.
Last week, Boulder County Public Health asked residents and business owners to provide feedback through Friday on what they would like the county to request in a variance to the state’s order. As of Thursday afternoon, Goussetis said that the county had received 633 feedback submissions in English and three in Spanish.
“Our request for feedback regarding a variance was to gather information about the elements of the restrictions in each sector that were problematic to follow,” Goussetis said. “Our goal with requesting a variance was not to ease restrictions, but to have flexibility to apply guidance based on risk rather than sector. What we mean is that rather than blanket guidance such as ‘x people are allowed in a restaurant’ it might be ‘x people are allowed per square foot.’ Of course, there are other factors we would consider as well.”
Since Boulder County asked the public to consider a state variance last week, Goussetis said two things happened: One was “a significant outbreak in our community (which) prohibits us from applying for a variance,” and the other was the fact Gov. Jared Polis on Monday announced a new Protect our Neighbors phase that may give residents and businesses the flexibility they are seeking. Goussetis said Thursday that feedback on the variance had not yet been analyzed, since the deadline for submission is Friday.
Protect Our Neighbors could be implemented at the end of June or early July, according to information about the order on the CDPHE’s website. It could allow large-scale events to happen as early as July, as well as summer camps to reopen and bars to have 25% of their indoor capacity, according to the Denver Post. To qualify for that phase, counties would have to reach lower disease transmission levels, have the ability to treat patients and to handle intensive care hospital surges, and to have testing and effective case investigation, contact tracing and outbreak response in place.
As of Thursday, Goussetis said it was too early to tell if Boulder County will be in a place to transition to the Protect Our Neighbors phase at that time.
“It will depend on the ability of each person involved in the outbreak to stay isolated or quarantined and be forthcoming about their close contacts with our disease investigators,” Goussetis said.
Following reports of large numbers of people gathering on the banks Boulder Creek in Eben G. Fine park in Boulder between late April and May, the city issued a sweeping order May 20 closing all park land and the creek bed north of the Boulder Creek Path from the eastern boundary of the park to the western end of the city. Goussetis said “too much time has now passed from when we would see any new cases from the gathering at Eben G. Fine park in May.”
“The time from exposure to symptom onset (e.g. the incubation period) is thought to be three to 14 days, though symptoms typically appear within four or five days after exposure, and a person with COVID-19 may be contagious 48 to 72 hours before starting to experience symptoms,” Goussetis wrote in an email.
Statewide, there have been 29,442probable or positive coronavirus cases. Of those, 5,272 people have been hospitalized. There have been 1,617 deaths and of those, there have been 1,373 deaths directly attributed to the virus. Of Colorado’s roughly 5.7 million population, 254,020 people have been tested for the virus.
