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DENVER (KDVR) — The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment has 10,018 deaths due to COVID listed on its state coronavirus dashboard.

The news puts the past into a new perspective. The New York Times ran a front-page piece when the United States’ death toll passed 10,000 people on May 24, 2020. Now with over 800,000 dead nationally, Colorado has matched the panicked headline on its own smaller scale.

The new record comes now as a reminder – the United States has spent more of the COVID-19 pandemic with a vaccine than without one. Tuesday marked the one-year anniversary of the first COVID vaccination issued to the U.S. public.

More Coloradans have died with COVID since the vaccine was released than before. As of Dec. 14, 2020, Colorado had recorded 4,375 deaths. In the year between then and now, it has recorded 5,643 deaths.

The news, grim as it is, comes at a time when Colorado’s COVID metrics have been steadily improving. The average number of daily cases is now at its lowest point since September after falling since Nov. 22.

Deaths have been falling past their mid-November peak. The same goes for the number of patients hospitalized with COVID, which has decreased by 300 people in the last four weeks. The average number of daily hospital admissions is now half of what it was a month ago.