Data: Pueblo's COVID-19 cases, deaths and hospitalizations increased in 2021
The second year of the pandemic was considerably harder on Pueblo County than the first, according to local data and medical experts.
Pueblo saw a 28% increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations in 2021 compared to the previous year, according to Pueblo Department of Public Health and Environment Epidemiologist Anne Hill. At the same time, based on recorded death data, Pueblo had a 3% increase in deaths over 2020.
"These numbers are extremely high and are recognized as excess deaths — more people died than expected compared to averages taken from 2018 and 2019," Hill said. "Additionally, in 2021, we saw a greater percent of men die from COVID-19 as compared to women."
Hill said 5% more men than women died from COVID-19 in Pueblo County in 2020. In 2021, that death-rate difference grew even larger, as 22% more men than women died from the disease in Pueblo last year.
Hill said the trend of more men dying from the disease than women has "also been substantiated in national data."
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Pueblo also recorded a 29% increase in recorded COVID-19 cases, going from 13,233 cases in 2020 to 17,088 in 2021.
"This increase in cases occurred when more individuals had access to vaccinations as compared to 2020. Additionally, we saw the beginning of reinfections, or individuals that got COVID-19 more than one time," Hill said. "In 2020, we recorded 15 cases of reinfection in Pueblo County as compared to 408 reinfection cases in 2021, an increase of 260%."
Like elsewhere in the country, the vast majority of hospitalized COVID-19 patients in Pueblo, 83%, were unvaccinated, according to Public Health Director Randy Evetts.
Right now, only 56.5% of the eligible population in Pueblo is fully vaccinated, he said.
Even with the emergence of the Omicron variant, hospital capacity in Pueblo County has decreased in recent weeks but there remains a chance that capacity could climb again.
"There is potential to reach full capacity across the state in the first quarter of the new year if Omicron continues to increase at the rate which it is currently," Evetts said.
"Modeling from the Colorado School of Public Health suggests that hospital capacity will be severely challenged in the coming months. It will depend on the severity of the virus and the number of people that are infected."
Notably, this variant behaves differently than those in the past.
"So far, Omicron appears to be less severe overall than the Delta variant. However, many more people are getting infected in a shorter period of time because the Omicron virus is more contagious," Evetts said.
Because this strain is more contagious but doesn't appear to cause severe illness as often as the Delta variant, the impacts on the community may vary as well.
"The bigger impact may be to employers and schools because such a large volume of the workforce could be sick at the same time," Evetts said. "In addition, testing sites could be very busy and emergency rooms are likely to be very busy even though patients may not be admitted to the hospital."
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Contact Chieftain reporter Lacey Latch at llatch@gannett.com or on social media @laceylatch.
This article originally appeared on The Pueblo Chieftain: Data: Pueblo, Colorado hit harder by COVID pandemic in 2021 than 2020
