Colorado’s intensive care bed capacity is stretched to its most limited levels since the pandemic began, state data shows, and Gov. Jared Polis said Wednesday that unvaccinated residents are being hospitalized “for no good reason.” 

“Some won’t even make it, some will die,” he told reporters of the 710 unvaccinated Coloradans who are hospitalized with COVID-19. “Some will make it, but it will be a harrowing few days and weeks. We wish them well in their recovery, but we also wish that their misery helps get the message out on why people should be vaccinated.” 

Ninety percent of Colorado’s ICU beds are in use, according to state data last updated Tuesday.

Of 1,649 intensive care beds in the state, 149 are available, Polis said. The average ICU capacity over the past week is 91%, the highest point in the pandemic by five percentage points.

The current levels top even the winter surge, when more residents were hospitalized. There were, however, 200 to 300 more ICU beds available in November 2020, as hospitals triggered surge plans.  

Many ICU patients are not infected with COVID-19. Officials have long said that COVID-19 is more likely to exacerbating the regular expectations of ICU bed use, rather than overwhelming bed space on its own.

Polis called the ICU capacity figures “startling” and that the state has “very few ICU beds left, relative to the norm.” 

Colorado’s COVID-19 case totals have begun to dip in recent weeks after a fifth wave that surged in August and early September. But they still remain high compared to much of the rest of the pandemic, and the state’s average positivity rate remains above 6%.

Two Colorado public health experts told the Gazette this week that the high positivity rate was concerning, even amid an overall decline in cases.

Despite the hope brought by the declining numbers, hospitalizations have yet to drop comparably. Polis said there were 922 confirmed patients as of Wednesday.

Scores more — 101 on Tuesday — are hospitalized with suspected cases of the virus. The 922 number is the highest of the late summer surge and is unrivaled since the first week of January, when Colorado was beginning to ease out of its winter spike. 

Though rates of spread remain highest among the youngest Coloradans, Polis said there’s no threat to pediatric intensive care beds. Twenty-six people younger than 18 years old are in the hospital in Colorado because of COVID-19.

As he and other state officials have emphasized since the latest surge began, Polis said Wednesday the current crisis is driven and dominated by the unvaccinated.

He said even if residents don’t love themselves enough to get immunized, “hopefully” they love the people around them sufficiently to do so.

“But if everybody was vaccinated and for some reason the virus was still spreading the way it is, I’ve projected the number of hospitalizations we’d have: We’d have about 265 people in the hospital,” he said.

Researchers for the Colorado School of Public Health wrote in August that improved vaccination rates could save hundreds of hospital admissions.

As of Tuesday, 77% of eligible Coloradans had received at least one dose of the vaccine. More than 70% are fully immunized, according to state data.

Elizabeth Carlton of the Colorado School of Public Health said in an email that though it’s encouraging that cases appear to be falling, high hospitalization figures concern her.

“To be clear, the good news is that the rapid growth in hospital demand that characterized most of August/early Sept has stopped,” she wrote. “But we aren’t seeing a rapid decline in hospital demand that has characterized prior waves. To use a wildfire analogy, the wildfire appears to have stopped growing, but it’s still a pretty big blaze.” 

She and Glen Mays, another School of Public Health expert, warned that the coming cold weather – and its inevitable tendency to drive students and adults indoors – is another concern heading into the coming months.