DENVER — Though COVID-19 didn’t push Colorado hospitals to the brink this fall and winter, the virus still hospitalized more than twice as many people as the flu, and it’s not clear whether that’s going to be the new normal.
Since Oct. 1, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment reported 3,040 flu hospitalizations and 7,877 COVID-19 hospitalizations. And while flu hospital admissions haven’t exceeded 20 in a week since early February, those linked to COVID-19 have been much slower to come down, with 226 admissions recorded in the week of April 16.
The state doesn’t specifically track flu deaths, making exact comparisons impossible. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated 450 to 700 people die of influenza or pneumonia each flu season in Colorado, while 1,032 deaths have been attributed to COVID-19 since the start of October.
Epidemiologists disagree about whether humans and the virus that causes COVID-19 have reached a kind of detente, where it can no longer create massive disruption, though it remains a threat to vulnerable people. Colorado saw small waves in summer and fall 2022 as new variants emerged and people’s behavioral patterns changed, but they didn’t approach levels that threatened health care capacity, as in 2020 and 2021.
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