With Delta Variant Surging In Colorado, A Country Music Festival Goes On

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/07/08/ [login to see] /with-delta-variant-surging-in-colorado-a-country-music-festival-goes-on
Dr. Rachel LaCount grasped a metal hoop at a playground and spun in circles with her 7-year-old son, turning the distant mesas of the Colorado National Monument into a red-tinged blur.

LaCount has lived in Grand Junction, Colo., a city of 64,000, nearly her whole life. As a hospital pathologist, she knows better than most that her hometown has become one of the nation's top breeding grounds for the delta variant of COVID-19.

"The delta variant's super scary," LaCount said.

That highly transmissible variant, first detected in India, is now the dominant COVID-19 strain in the United States. Colorado is among the top states with the highest proportion of the delta variant, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Mesa County has the most delta variant cases of any county in Colorado, state health officials report, making the area a hot spot within a hot spot. A CDC team and the state's epidemiologist traveled to Grand Junction to investigate how and why cases of the variant were moving so quickly in Mesa County.