Low Vax Rates, the Delta Variant, and a Huge Music Festival Make for a ‘Perfect Storm’ in This Colorado County
For the last seven weeks, health officials in Mesa County, Colorado, have been scrambling to contain the highly transmissible Delta variant of the novel coronavirus. But now, as a huge music festival kicks off, time may be up.
As the first location in Colorado to positively identify the presence of the variant deemed potentially more deadly and at least 50 percent more contagious on May 5, the county, nestled at the state’s border with Utah, only had five cases. Within a month, with the vaccination rate in the area low, the variant positivity rate soared 2,500 percent.
And health-care officials believe that number will only go higher—especially with the start of Country Jam, the state’s largest three-day music festival that has already sold 50,000 tickets. The potential disaster site pitted vaccine holdouts against an extra-contagious variant of COVID-19—one that may make people sicker, faster—in a local encapsulation of a phenomenon experts fear will play out in anti-vaxxer bastions nationwide.