Daily change in COVID-19 hospitalization and death rates. Created by Nels Hoffman

By NELS HOFFMAN
Los Alamos

The rate at which people are dying or going into hospitals in Colorado, because of COVID-19, is decreasing. The figure above shows the daily change in the total 

number of people either dead or in the hospital because of COVID-19, in Colorado (green dots) and New Mexico (yellow dots).

Over the most recent 5-day period, from April 4 to April 8, an average of about 84 people each day either died or went into the hospital in Colorado, because of COVID-19. This rate is 25 percent lower than the rate from March 30 to April 3, when the average rate was more than 112 people per day.

Whether this decrease is a trend that will continue, or just a fluke, remains to be seen. (The average rates over 5-day intervals are shown as dashed lines in the above figure.)

We can’t say the same for New Mexico, where the hospitalization plus death rate is quite variable. But fortunately the rate in New Mexico is much lower than it is in Colorado, at least so far. Colorado’s population is 2.7 times larger than New Mexico’s, but 12 times as many people have died from COVID-19, nearly 20 times as many people have been hospitalized, and Colorado’s peak hospitalization plus death rate is more than 10 times larger than New Mexico’s peak rate – so far. 

It’s useful to add the death rate to the hospitalization rate, because one reason the number of hospitalized people might decrease is that they die. So to guard against that kind of spurious decrease in hospitalization, we add the two rates.

Data come from the health departments of the two states: https://cv.nmhealth.org/newsroom/ , https://cv.nmhealth.org/, and https://covid19.colorado.gov/case-data.