After warning of restrictions, is El Paso County flattening COVID-19 curve?
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) -- A stark warning was issued by the El Paso County Public Health Department nearly 14 days ago: if there isn't a slow in the rate of COVID-19, the county could have to re-evaluate variances and scale back business operations.
"It's a pretty upward trend for the month of July and it actually began in June," said Dr. Robin Johnson, El Paso County Public Health Medical Director.
The county went from a rate that was among the lowest in the state to the second-highest rate in the state behind Denver, but the number of daily coronavirus cases has been dropping since Dr. Leon Kelly's warning.
"We have continued to trend upward and in the last couple days we have flattened. It is has been a couple of days so we are hopeful, but it's not necessarily a long enough period of time to say this trend is something we can hang our hat on," Johnson said.
Data reported by El Paso County Public Health showed 124 reported cases on July 9. Since then, the county had not reported a single day with more than 100 cases, until July 23 when they reported 107 and July 27 when they reported 126. The overall trend since late June has been going up with occasional dips.
"There may be a point where stepping back some of the numbers included in that variance to try again to help us kind of flatten that curve and get ahead of the spread," she said.
