The Federal COVID PHE declared COVID-19 over on May/11/2023, but is COVID really over? The short answer is no. The average number of cases per day in Colorado for August is 319, and that may not seem like a lot, but it’s not showing a steady decrease. In fact, it’s not really going down at all.  Why?

The rise in COVID-19 could be because after the announcement of COVID being over, no one really thought much of Covid at all, no more social distancing, or masks, made COVID irrelevant to daily lives. And overall, they aren’t wrong. 316 cases daily isn’t a whole bunch. In the past couple weeks, cases have skyrocketed, to 2,019 current cases in Colorado, in September. This isn’t looking good, and this means that COVID is in fact steadily going up. 

Of course, this doesn’t mean a shutdown, or anything like that, but it does mean that we need to be more careful with treating the cold season in Colorado. This means that if you think you have a cold, maybe it might be a good time to take a test to keep COVID out. 

The first outbreak started in the week of 8/13/23 when the cases went from 757 to 1,760. This is a huge leap of cases! But why did this happen? This is the back-to-school week for some schools. In other countries, like Nepal, COVID is still very prominent, and when kids come back from traveling at the end of summer to countries like this, they go right to school with little to no travel quarantine. And because the cold season is coming, maybe kids just think, ‘Oh, it’s a common cold’. They go back to school, make everyone else sick, and cause an outbreak. In the week of 9/10/23, the cases rose to 2,424. This, according to the CDC, is “Back to school related,” and this makes sense. Cold season is tough with dividing cases between a cold or COVID, and they could most likely be people going to school with COVID. 

Overall we need to be more careful when heading to school with a supposed cold, and even if you don’t think it is COVID it doesn’t hurt to check, thanks to the CDC now releasing free delivered tests, thanks to the rise in cases. This really proves that we need to take action and be careful when it comes to COVID-19.