Vaccination clinics have been held and completed in every long-term care facility in Colorado, state health officials said at a press conference Monday in which they reflected on how the past year has hammered Colorado’s most vulnerable.

More than 135,000 residents and staffers at Colorado’s long-term care facilities have received both their first and second dose, said Scott Bookman, the state’s COVID incident commander. That’s led to a clear drop in mortality and in overall cases, he said. He echoed a refrain made repeatedly by Gov. Jared Polis: Vaccines in these facilities, hit hardest by the pandemic, signal the end of the crisis point. 

Still, there’s work to do. Bookman said that 88% of residents chose to be vaccinated. But only two-thirds of staffers have also done so. Bookman said the state would continue its education and outreach efforts to those staffers.

The bulk of the press conference was spent celebrating the state’s efforts over the past year to keep the virus out of those facilities. From testing to staffing to funding, the officials described the labor undertaken from the beginning to curb the spread.

At no other time have those efforts been easier to celebrate than now: With the introduction of the vaccine, the number of cases in nursing homes has plummeted. At one point, the health officials said Monday, long-term care facilities accounted for more than 13% of the state’s overall cases. Now, it’s less than 1%. 

The size – and quantity – of outbreaks in those facilities has also fallen off of a cliff in recent weeks. Per data presented Monday, the average outbreak infected nearly 40 people. It’s now down to fewer than six.

As of last week, when state data was last updated, there were 47 nursing home outbreaks and 37 assisted-living clusters. That’s far below figures from the beginning of the year: In the first week of January, there were 141 nursing home outbreaks, plus another 147 in assisted-living facilities.

Bookman repeatedly said there was a “light at the end of the tunnel that gets bigger and bigger every single day.”