According to recent data, Colorado is currently sitting right around the middle of the United States in terms of COVID case numbers. However, even though case numbers are dropping, Colorado hospital numbers are still maintaining intimidating numbers.

9News reported that Colorado isn't seeing enough of a drop in hospital numbers to call it an official decline. 9News quoted Dr. Carrie Horn, the Chief Medical Officer at National Jewish Health, about how even though there isn't a sharp drop down in numbers, Colorado is slowly flattening the curve.

Although the majority of the state is vaccinated, and hospital numbers aren't dramatically spiking, the concern about hospital staff numbers has to come into the conversation.

Northern Colorado hospitals are facing a nursing shortage, and those who are working have become severely burnt out. Meanwhile, over a hundred UCHealth employees were terminated earlier this week across Colorado because they opted to not receive the vaccine or cite a medical or religious exemption.

While COVID numbers are still prevalent in Colorado, the Colorado Department of Public Health has turned heavily to variant monitoring, especially after the dramatic spike in Delta variant cases that started a few months ago.

On Oct. 5, the CDPHE announced the addition of a new class of variants - "Variants Being Monitored" (VBM) - to help monitor variants that are circulating at a low level in the U.S. It's an attempt to be ahead of the curve should any of those variants spike like the Delta variant.

All current COVID and variant information can be found on Colorado's COVID-19 dashboard.

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