The omicron driven wave of coronavirus cases in El Paso County is falling, although the number of people testing positive remains higher than during any other wave. 

The case numbers in the community reached stratospheric levels locally earlier this month, health professionals said and case numbers likely peaked on Jan. 15 when 12,845 residents tested positive in a week. As of Tuesday, 9,352 residents had tested positive in the last week or about 1,336 cases on average a day. At the height of the delta peak 3,144 people tested positive in a week, El Paso County Public Health data show. 

As omicron case numbers fall, the pressure on hospitals in the community is also easing, Centura and UCHealth administrators said.

“Hopefully, we are over the worst,” said Dr. Bill Plauth, Penrose-St. Francis chief medical officer. 

The highly contagious variant drove far more people to seek emergency department care at hospitals in town, prompting staff to screen patients and ask those without true health emergencies to seek care elsewhere. The hospitals always encourage residents to seek care at the appropriate place but it was a more vigorous process during the omicron spike.  

El Paso County hospitals caring for more COVID-19 patients than at any point during the delta wave

UCHealth ended the practices technically considered a crisis standard of care last week as demand in the emergency department has tapered, said Dr. David Steinbruner, chief medical officer for UCHealth Memorial Hospital Central and Memorial Hospital North. 

However, the number of patients in the emergency department at UCHealth is still up quite a bit from this time last year, he said. 

“Although we have an increase in people presenting for all types of reasons, those people who are seeking care for symptoms and concerns related to COVID remains fairly high. Fortunately, the number of people being hospitalized specifically for COVID is lower than we would expect given the high positivity rate and prevalence of COVID in our community,” he said. 

About 30% of those tested for the virus are positive, county public health data show. 

At Penrose- St. Francis the emergency department also remains busy but the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients has fallen 15% in recent days, Plauth said. Some of the patients came in for care in November and December when delta was surging and have continued to need care, he said. 

Across the community the number of people in the hospital for the virus seems to be in a high plateau with 248 patients, El Paso County Public Health data show. At the peak on Jan. 14, 255 people were in the hospital. Those numbers are expected to keep falling.

“Our current model shows that this plateau will hold through the beginning of February and then slowly decline. This is still our best guess based on what we have seen and reflects similar trends in other states that are ahead of us in the course of the omicron surge,” Steinbruner said. 

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Plauth said while the omicron variant can still cause severe illness, he has also seen a marked decline in how sick patients are getting and faster recovery times. 

“My belief is that we will be in a far better place moving forward and have more resistance as well as resilience against future strains,” he said. 

Residents should still be prepared for the virus to be around for a long time, Steinbruner said. 

“Just as we have learned to respond and to live with influenza and other diseases, we’ll learn to adapt to COVID-19, to get regular booster shots and to take appropriate precautions,” he said.

El Paso County Public Health spokeswoman Michelle Beyrle said the community has shown consistent interest in boosters and as of Saturday more than 150,000 El Paso County residents have received a booster dose.

The trends in El Paso County are similar to Denver where cases have dropped more than 30% in recent days, according to the city’s Department of Public Health and Environment. Denver’s daily average of new cases nearly hit 2,000 on Jan. 10 — more than Colorado averaged as a state between mid-January and early September of last year. But it’s dropped steadily since.

A spokeswoman for Denver’s health department confirmed that officials believe omicron’s peak has passed, though rates remain higher than at any point before this wave.

The leaders of the Tri-County Health Department, which oversees Adams, Arapahoe and — in some ways — Douglas County, also believe the peak has passed. John Douglas, the executive director of the agency, said those counties’ high point was Jan. 11.

“Since that day, the number of cases (reported daily) has fallen just above 40% in Adams and Arapahoe … and about 30% in Douglas,” he said Monday afternoon.

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Positivity rates — tracked by public health officials as an early sign of a wave continuing or subsiding — have also fallen to varying degrees in those counties, Douglas said.

Denver, as well as Adams and Arapahoe counties, has an indoor mask mandate still in effect. It was set to run through Jan. 3, but it was extended when omicron burst through Colorado. It was extended another month, to go through Feb. 3.

Courtney Ronner, spokeswoman for the Denver health department, said in an email that it was “too soon to say” what would come of the face-covering requirement, but that the agency would “likely have more information next week.”

The order in Adams and Arapahoe counties was put in place by Tri-County’s Board of Health. Douglas said health officials will be discussing the order soon; the expiration of it is pegged to hospital capacity, but Douglas said the agency and its board may revisit those metrics “if it looks like there’s a lag while everything is getting better” and consider an “early cessation.”

Tri-County also has a masking requirement for schools, which is set to expire at the end of this month. Douglas said officials have been talking with superintendents and that Tri-County would likely extend the school requirement through the end of February. From there, he said, it could be renewed for March or ended earlier, at some point in February.

Peak or not, Ronner warned that case levels in Denver remain elevated, still at their highest levels of any pre-omicron point in the pandemic. She and Douglas both urged people to continue being careful to keep the wave from rising back up again.

“Overall it is great news that rates are decreasing,” Ronner said, “but Denver residents should still remain vigilant about wearing face coverings in indoor public settings, getting vaccinated and boosted if they are able to, and following isolation and quarantine recommendations.”