DENVER (KDVR) — Governor Jared Polis announced Friday that the state is seeing its fourth wave of COVID-19 cases. 

“It’s fourth and final wave. I don’t expect there will be fifth wave but that’s not our concern right now, it’s this fourth wave,” Polis said. 

As of Saturday, hospitalizations due to COVID in Colorado are up 47%. The state’s website reporting there were 1,253 new cases on Saturday. 

“It’s worrisome as we see hospitalizations increasing and we see test positive increasing,” Dr. Richard Zane, Chief Innovation Officer at UCHealth said.  

Zane said a chunk of the positive cases in this wave are targeting people in their 20s and 30s. He said he also expects this wave to be less deadly compared to others in the past. 

“For the patients hospitalized, we know so much more than we did a year ago,” Zane said. 

“Colorado has made tremendous progress vaccinating those 50 and older, which ensures our most vulnerable population has the protection they need, but we can’t stop there. Make sure to get the vaccine as soon as you’re able to, and until that happens, continue taking precautions to protect yourself, even if you think your age and health make you less likely to be hospitalized or lose your life,” Polis said. “The end of this terrible pandemic is in sight, Colorado, but we can’t let our guard down now.”

Zane said we are also seeing people testing positive for variants of the COVID virus. In Colorado, according to health officials we have seen cases of the California, UK, South Africa and Brazil variants.  

According to health officials the state has seen positive cases of over 1,450 of the UK variant, 24 cases of the South Africa variant, 488 cases of the California variant and a dozen cases of the Brazil variant. 

“We definitely have seen variants of concern, some are more contagious and the vaccine behaves differently,” Zane said.