Eagle County officials instituted an indoor mask order Wednesday as the county, flush with winter tourists, faces a crush of COVID-19 cases likely fueled by the omicron variant.

The order became effective at noon Wednesday, roughly 90 minutes after the vote. As written now, it will expire Jan. 17 and requires indoor masking and a minimum of 10-day quarantines for individuals who test positive. People who are not fully vaccinated and have not yet received test results but had close contact with a positive case must also self-quarantine. 

“This is simply the best that we believe we can do with the data we’ve got,” Matt Scherr, Eagle County commissioner and member of the county’s board of health, said at a Wednesday morning special meeting. He and the other two members of the board voted unanimously to implement the order. “I don’t think we have any understanding of what’s going to happen in the future. But this is the best we can do.”

Eagle is the Colorado county hardest-hit by omicron thus far. The variant’s arrival is so recent that the county has not yet officially identified a case of it, with final sequencing still pending. The positivity rate in the county is 30%, public health director Heath Harmon told the board, up from roughly 10% last week. The number of cases per 100,000 residents has more than tripled in eight days, from roughly 300 to more than 1,000.

The demand for testing is limiting capacity, the county said, and wait times for results have doubled to 48 hours. The state has sent resources to help the county expand its capabilities, officials said.

“Omicron is here,” Harmon said.

The variant has exploded nationwide, accounting for nearly three-quarters of recent cases. In Colorado, its presence has risen from about  0.53% percent of cases the week of Nov. 28 to nearly 10% last week. Gov. Jared Polis said Tuesday that it was only a matter of days or weeks before omicron was the dominant strain in Colorado, displacing the long-reigning delta variant.

Chris Lindley, the chief population officer for Vail Health, told the board that the system’s emergency department and urgent care centers are operating at double their average volumes. Many staff are isolated, and the state is surging 18 registered nurses to help supplement the facility. Additional testing sites are opening, he continued. Harmon said a vaccination team has also arrived from the state and is getting set up now.

Over the past three days, one in three tests run by Vail Health – including on out-of-state visitors – has returned positive for COVID-19. Vail has close to 100,000 visitors this week, Lindley said.

“Every hotel is full. Every Airbnb is full. People are up here skiing,” he said. 

Harmon told The Denver Gazette after the meeting that the area was “entering the busiest visitor time of the year.”

“The increase in population to these communities can have a multiplying factor, whether it is bringing the virus into the community, increasing risks of exposures, and carrying it with them when they leave,” he said in an email. “This has been true throughout the pandemic with previous variants, but even more so with Omicron.”

The system’s five intensive care beds are all occupied. Even if omicron is less severe than delta or other strains of the virus – which researchers are still determining – the amount of disease in the community is unsustainable for the hospital, he said.

“Even if the virus is one-tenth the strength of delta,” he said, “looking at the numbers we have today, there’s no question we’ll be operating at the highest capacity in our hospital that we’ve ever operated.”

Harmon said masks were no magic bullet, but he stressed the need for layer protections. Harmon and the board members said they’d received 75 emails and messages about the order before they voted and that many businesses – though not all – supported the order, as a way to keep their employees healthy and able to work during the busy tourist season.