Pitkin County has adopted the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) Community Transmission Metric for counties across the United States to guide current Pitkin County healthy best practices and mask recommendations. Our goal is to provide a consistent and familiar metric that is recognizable by both Pitkin County residents and our visitors.
The current COVID-19 status will be based on the current CDC Community Transmission Metric level. The metric level will be displayed as a colored bar under “Current CDC Risk Level” on the COVID-19 Response and Recovery homepage as well as under “Pitkin County COVID-19 Risk Level” on the COVID-19 Status webpage. A complete breakdown of each level and how they are determined are outlined on the COVID-19 Status webpage.
How are CDC Community Transmission Metric levels determined for Pitkin County?
The CDC Community Transmission Metric uses the total number of new cases divided by the population of Pitkin County multiplied by 100,000 within the last 7 days (7-day incidence per 100,000 population) and the percentage of all PCR tests that were positive over the last 7 days (7-day % positivity). If the two indicators fall into two different levels, the higher level is selected as Pitkin County’s current community transmission level.
How does using the CDC Community Transmission Metric change Pitkin County’s monitoring strategy?
While the adoption of the CDC’s Community Transmission Metric appears like a big change, it only affects our healthy best practices and mask recommendations. Our local and regional monitoring of hospital capacity remains the main information that Pitkin County Public Health and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) will use in considering implementation of required mitigation strategies.
Please visit our COVID-19 Hospital Capacity and Key Metrics dashboard for up-to-date information on local and regional hospital status. If our local hospital capacity reaches concerning levels or if CDPHE determines that our regional hospital capacity has reached concerning levels, Pitkin County Public Health would then consider implementing required mitigation strategies, regardless of the CDC Community Transmission Metric level.
The main reason for using the CDC county-level Community Transmission Metric is to have an evidence-based way of updating our recommendations that is comparable to what is going on within Colorado and across the United States. Recommendations based on our Community Transmission metric level should be used to help individuals and businesses make informed decisions about protecting our communities and hospital system from current and future surges of COVID-19.
