El Paso County sees highest daily COVID-19 count since pandemic started

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) -- The El Paso County Department of Public Health and Environment's daily report of COVID-19 cases in the county shows that a record number of positive cases happened on Wednesday.

According to EPC Public Health, there were 145 positive tests for COVID-19 reported on Wednesday. That eclipses every other day of testing since the county began checking for the coronavirus in early March -- the last spike in the county was on July 27, when there were 139 cases.

A total of 2,432 tests were done on the same day, and the county's current positivity rate was at 4.36%. EPC Public Health puts our incidence rate at 143.3 over 14 days per 100,000 people.

With those reported numbers, El Paso County should be in the "Safer At Home: Level 2" range for public guidelines, however, the county is still reporting that we are in Level 1. That means that indoor capacities at restaurants, venues, and schools could be affected. If the county gets to Level 3 -- that would require an incidence rate of over 175 and more than two people hospitalized per day -- then schools will need to significantly limit in-person attendance, and restaurants would have their capacities slashed to 25%.

Since the county began public testing for COVID-19, a total of 8,142 positive cases have been identified out of 130,363 tests; 188 people have died and 644 people had to be hospitalized.

Across the state of Colorado, there have been 81,918 positive cases of coronavirus out of 1,050,566 tests; 2,029 deaths in the state have been reported due to COVID-19.

Editor's Note: EPC initially reported 150 cases on Wednesday and then updated the number to say 145. This article has been edited to reflect the change.