DENVER (KDVR) — Coloradans may be getting less intense about personal COVID protocols as public and business restrictions are slowly lifted.
In February, the City and County of Broomfield moved from Level Yellow to Level Blue on the state’s COVID restriction dial. On Tuesday, it moved back down to Level Yellow, citing a sharp increase in cases.
It was the first Denver metro county to reverse its restriction level since the fall. Data does not show a statewide increase in cases, but it does show a slowdown in the daily decrease in cases.
In late November, daily cases tumbled from their peak as Colorado went through a second round of tight restrictions. Those numbers plummeted until a short post-holiday uptick in late December and early January, then continued downward.
In the past week, daily cases have continued to go down but at a much less sharp rate. There are currently only about 100 fewer daily cases than Feb. 26.
This is still a decrease in cases, but at a slow pace unseen until now. In the last four months, that same 10-day time period typically sees a case rate decline of 500-1,000 cases.
A chart of the average change in case counts shows the trend clearly.
Each column in the chart below shows the percent of change between two days’ average COVID cases. Number jump around sporadically for most of the pandemic history, either as cases went up or went down.
Since late February, that daily rate of change has been one of the slowest since last March.