The Boulder County Board of Health will weigh a variety of factors before deciding whether to lift the county’s COVID-19 mask mandate, including a declining group of numbers linked to the pandemic, a health official said Thursday.
Lane Drager told a group of Boulder County business associations that although COVID-19 case numbers are dropping, the county is still in the state’s “high transmission” category.
Drager is Boulder County Public Health’s COVID-19 Community Mitigation Liaison. Drager also told the group the virus continues to kill residents.
“Deaths continue to rise in the county,” said Drager, citing Feb. 8 statistics which showed that 352 people in Boulder County have died from COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020 and that there have been 95 deaths since May 2021.
Drager spoke during a virtual Cross-Industry Support Session that brings in a variety of businesses, chambers of commerce and other local support groups to get the latest update on the COVID-19 spread.
Corine Waldau, senior director of economic vitality for the Boulder Chamber, said during the session that many local residents will be closely watching the results of the Feb. 14 meeting of the Boulder County Board of Health. The group will review the county mask mandate which requires masks for indoor gatherings for ages 2 and up, regardless of vaccination status, according to Boulder County Public Health..
The mandate has been in place since August.
The Feb. 14 meeting, “will be a Valentine’s Day date for the entire community,” Waldau said.
Several categories show declining COVID-19 numbers including seven-day cumulative case rates per 100,000 people and among all age groups, Drager said. Hospitalizations are also down while the positivity rate is at 13.1%, compared to 16% in the week prior to Feb. 6, he said.
But the county is still experiencing a shortage in COVID-19 therapies, Drager said. “There are supply chain and access issues,” he said. “We are finding a lot of people lack access to various therapies out there.”
The omicron variant also remains a big factor in the county, which is experiencing strains on its health care workforce, Drager said. “We are still seeing a severe impact in our hospitals,” he said.
He declined to predict if the health board will lift the mask mandate, even as several neighboring counties have done so. The city and county of Denver and Broomfield as well as Adams and Arapahoe counties have allowed their mask mandates to expire. Jefferson County has indicated it will let its mask mandate expire Feb. 18, according to media reports.
“That is obviously a piece of the puzzle,” Drager said.
