Why El Paso County is seeing a new rise in COVID-19 cases

EL PASO COUNTY, Colo. (KRDO) Between Tuesday and Wednesday, the El Paso County Public Health Department is reporting another rise in COVID-19 cases.

This comes after KRDO reported cases had started to stabilize this week. On Tuesday, 90 new COVID-19 cases were reported, and on Wednesday there were 74.

"There are multiple reasons why see these peaks and valleys and so looking at a particular day is going to give us just one small piece of information," Haley Zachary, lead communicable disease epidemiologist at the health department explains.

She says they look at rolling averages for 14 day periods. On Thursday, the average number of cases for the last weeks is about 66 cases per day, down from 71 earlier this week.

The health department also says they've noticed a delay in COVID-19 test results.

"Unfortunately because of the high caseload and the high number of results we're looking at that can frequently get delayed a little longer," Zachary explains.

UCHealth reports their test results are still averaging 48-72 hours but says there is a delay in some automatic notifications getting uploaded to a patient's portal.

Watch the full story at 5p.m. on Newschannel 13.