Gov. Jared Polis pleaded with Coloradans on Thursday to get vaccinated or get a booster dose, as the state faces shrinking intensive care bed capacity and rising COVID-19 hospitalizations that have stressed the its health care system to its worst levels in nearly a year.

“Never in my wildest imagination did I think that there would be Coloradans that didn’t want to protect themselves, didn’t love themselves enough to almost eliminate their risk of being hospitalized,” he told reporters.

As federal regulators rapidly move toward approving booster shots for the entire population, hospitalizations in Colorado are hitting unprecedented levels, nearly a year after two effective vaccines were first introduced.

Polis and state health officials have repeatedly stressed that the pandemic could be largely under control if more of the state were inoculated. Though more than 71% of residents are fully vaccinated, the state’s overall rate has lagged significantly behind its spring highs. The combination of waning immunity and the more transmissible delta variant has shattered officials’ hopes that the pandemic was coming to an end in the early summer.

In addition to pleading for the unvaccinated to get their jabs, Polis urged those who’ve already been inoculated to get boosters. The federal government released data this week showing broad and overwhelming efficacy of the additional doses, and Polis repeatedly touted that data to urge uptake here.

Even as the COVID-19 situation hits its most critical level in nearly a year, the state faces the impending arrival of the flu season. Last year, Colorado practically strolled through respiratory season, with fewer than 40 flu hospitalizations. This year, though, students are back in school and behavioral changes, like masking and social distancing, are far lower than they were 12 months ago. Polis and other officials have started, incorporating calls for flu vaccinations into their public messaging, warning that the state cannot handle a wave of flu hospitalizations – during which there are often more than 3,000 in a six-month span – amid this COVID-19 surge.

“We cannot afford a [3,000]-person-hospitalized flu season,” he said Thursday, adding that the pandemic is “not at a level that we can manage it. There are too many people unvaccinated.”

Even without an influx of flu patients into their beds, Colorado hospitals are stretched thin, officials have said recently. On Monday, 13 hospitals in the metro region were diverting emergency patients in tandem, a situation that one hospital official said was unique and concerning.

As of Wednesday, 1,172 residents are hospitalized with confirmed COVID-19 infections, the highest mark of 2021 thus far. Seventy-nine percent of those patients are unvaccinated. Rachel Herlihy, the state’s epidemiologist, told reporters Thursday that hospitalizations are declining nationwide. Colorado, which has often been in better shape than the national average, has seen the opposite trend since mid-September.

Intensive care beds have typically been filled predominantly with non-COVID-19 cases. But the rush of cases now, coupled with hospitals’ increasingly tenuous staffing situations, has pushed the share of beds currently in use to over 90%, exceeding even the levels seen during the late 2020 surge. Data presented Friday indicated that there are fewer acute care beds available in Colorado now that any other point in the past 18 months.

Cara Welch, spokeswoman for the Colorado Hospital Association, told The Gazette this week that staffing is the biggest issue facing hospitals. Space, she said, isn’t an issue; having providers to man that space is. The state has stood up its Staffing Shortage Fusion Center, which allows facilities to apply for aid. Twelve Colorado National Guardsmen are currently being used to help administer medication, a spokeswoman for the state said.

Polis told reporters Thursday that officials are looking at ways that military personnel can help administer vaccines and booster doses. He also said they may be used to help the “hospital capacity crisis that we have, especially in El Paso County.”

The governor again gave no sign that he was considering any state-level COVID-19 response measures, instead urging people to take their own steps. He praised counties like Larimer, which has instituted a mask mandate, in taking steps to lower their community spread. Intensive care capacity in Larimer County has been overwhelmed.