Colorado schools without mask mandates have higher COVID transmission, state data shows

Students successful Colorado schoolhouse districts that declined to institute disguise mandates are infected with COVID-19 astatine higher rates than successful districts that person face-covering requirements, according to information presented Thursday by the state’s apical epidemiologist.

Coronavirus cases among school-aged children betwixt 6 and 17 hover astir 300 cases per 100,000 radical successful schoolhouse districts that bash not necessitate masks, portion that fig is person to 250 per 100,000 successful districts that necessitate masks.

“There is simply a wide interaction that masks are having connected transmission,” said Rachel Herlihy, Colorado’s authorities epidemiologist, during a virtual quality conference.

The authorities has declined to institute an across-the-board disguise mandate successful schools, but Herlihy connected Thursday reiterated that they urge schools — careless of their transmission oregon vaccination rates — necessitate masks successful classrooms.

Cases among school-age children — immoderate of whom are eligible to get the vaccine — are besides importantly higher successful Colorado counties that person little vaccination rates, specified arsenic Weld and El Paso counties, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment information shows.

Denver and Boulder counties, which person overmuch higher vaccination rates, person corruption rates successful children astatine astir one-third the levels of the higher-transmission counties.

Overall, the authorities has seen a downward inclination successful COVID-19 cases implicit the past mates days, Herlihy said, but “it’s hard to cognize if we’ll proceed to spot a alteration oregon if we’ll summation arsenic we determination into the fall.”

Around 80% of COVID-19 hospitalizations successful Colorado are among the unvaccinated, authorities information shows, with hospitalizations inactive hovering adjacent highest levels of the pandemic’s archetypal question successful the outpouring of 2020.

“This is simply a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” said Scott Bookman, the state’s COVID-19 incidental commander.

Nearly 900 radical statewide are hospitalized with COVID-19, according to authorities data. That fig is fractional of the highest of 1,847 implicit the winter, but is conscionable arsenic precocious arsenic the aboriginal months of the pandemic.