DENVER (KDVR) — Despite overstuffed hospitals, Colorado is still sitting prettier than it was last year around this time.
Nov. 22 marks the day Colorado’s COVID cases reversed course and began falling last year. This year, they’ve already been trending down, and from a peak much less than last year’s caseload.
Last fall, the state was in the throes of the so-called Third Wave – a dramatic spike in COVID cases, hospitalizations and deaths – that began in early October and accelerated without a downbeat until peaking in late November.
At their high point, Colorado’s cases numbered 5,400 a day.
While there was a post-Thanksgiving bump in cases, it was a bump in an otherwise-uninterrupted caseload freefall that started Nov. 22.
This year, the pre-Thanksgiving new case rate is just under 2,900 per day, about two-thirds the daily new caseload of last year on the same day.
Furthermore, cases have been rolling downward for the last two weeks. Since Nov. 9, the daily caseload has fallen about 300 cases per day.