Just days after being detected in neighboring Garfield County, the omicron variant was also identified in Pitkin County on Monday.
According to Deputy County Manager Phylis Mattice, the individual who tested positive was “fully vaccinated but not boosted.”
Pitkin County declined to provide the person’s age or gender due to privacy concerns.
“We anticipated that it was only a matter of time before we would see the omicron variant in our county,” Josh Vance, Pitkin County Public Health epidemiologist, said in a press release Monday. “Our team remains committed to speaking with each person who tests positive for COVID-19 and conducting contact tracing in order to slow the spread as much as possible.”
Omicron was first detected in Colorado, along the Front Range, on Dec. 2 and as of Monday, there had been six confirmed cases of the new variant including in Garfield and Pitkin counties.
With December being one of Pitkin County’s busiest travel periods, public health officials warned it was only a matter of time before the highly transmissible variant would also show up locally.
“Although the delta variant still currently accounts for most cases in Pitkin County and Colorado, research suggests that the omicron variant is more transmissible than the delta variant and will likely become the predominant variant circulating in Pitkin County in the next several weeks,” Vance said. “With preliminary research indicating that Pfizer and Moderna booster vaccines work against the omicron variant, we urge everyone to get a booster as soon as possible to protect our community, our children, and our health care systems.”
According to Vance, individuals who received two doses of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines should get another dose of Moderna or Pfizer as their booster. Similarly, people who received the single-shot Johnson and Johnson vaccine should also get a Moderna or Pfizer booster shot upon eligibility.
People become eligible for a booster shot six months after their second dose of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines and two months after a single-dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
Dr. Christa Gieszl, who serves on the Pitkin County Board of Health as well as the Aspen School District Board of Education, encouraged parents — especially those with very young children — to get boosted immediately upon eligibility.
“Our priority at the school level is to keep school open as long as possible,” Gieszl said.
Coincidentally, Pitkin County recorded its first case of the omicron variant on the same day as the Aspen School District started its two-week-long winter break.
“This is a fortuitous time for omicron to be hitting our community because we have some time without [students] in school to see what happens,” Gieszl said.
Pitkin County’s seven-day COVID-19 incidence rate has doubled in the last week and as of Monday was 163 cases per 100,000 people.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers more than 99 cases per 100,000 people in a seven-day period as “high” community transmission.
“This virus, unfortunately, is much nastier than we thought it was going to be and clearly is able to mutate in ways that we were hoping it could not,” Gieszl said. “I think we still are not in the same place as we were last year because of, thank goodness, this amazing vaccine that we have.”
Pitkin County Commissioner and Board of Health Chair Greg Poschman spent his afternoon volunteering at a booster clinic set up at the Aspen High School gymnasium on Monday, where more than 500 “jabs” had been given, “and more on the way,” Poschman said. He commended the community for readily showing up to get boosted during such a critical time.
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