Colorado’s efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19 and how it is delivering vaccines to residents earned the state a ranking as the fourth safest in a recent comparison by personal finance website WalletHub.
“As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to make life difficult in the U.S., staying safe is one of Americans’ top concerns. Safety is also essential for getting the economy back on track, as the lower COVID-19 transmission and deaths are in a state, the more that state is able to eliminate restrictions on businesses. We’ll only be able to fully get back to life as normal once most of the population is vaccinated against coronavirus, and it will still be months before we can achieve that,” WalletHub stated in a post sharing its findings.
“The U.S. is off to a rough start so far, as only 2% of the population has been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 (received both doses)” as of Feb. 3, according to WalletHub. “Some states are already safer than others, though, based on how well they have kept the pandemic under control and how much they are vaccinating. In order to find out the safest states during the COVID-19 pandemic, WalletHub compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia across five key metrics. Our data set includes the rates of COVID-19 transmission, positive testing, hospitalizations and death, as well as the share of the eligible population getting vaccinated.”
Alaska was ranked first and Alabama last in the comparison.
“Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the safest conditions,” WalletHub stated. “We then determined the weighted average across all metrics to calculate an overall score for each state and used the resulting scores to rank-order the states.”
Colorado earned an overall score of 72.79%. The three states that ranked higher — Alaska, North Dakota, and Hawaii — earned scores of 89.08%, 79.48% and 76.45%, respectively.
As of Saturday, there were 402,714 COVID cases in Colorado, 22,258 hospitalizations, 5,454 deaths due to COVID and 5,704 deaths among COVID cases, according to Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment data.
Statewide as of Thursday, 512,021 people had received a first dose of vaccine, with 179,360 people immunized with two doses, according to state data.
Locally, 17,638 Boulder County residents had tested positive or were considered probable for the virus as of Friday, according to Boulder County Public Health. Hospitalizations totaled 476 and deaths totaled 234.
As of Thursday, 20,496 Boulder County residents had received a first dose of the vaccine and 9,393 had received the full course of two shots, according to county data.COVID data
For information on Boulder County COVID cases, deaths, hospitalizations and trends, click here.
