There were 84 Coloradans hospitalized with COVID-19 on Wednesday afternoon, the lowest number since the earliest days of the pandemic.

The figure, which is updated each Wednesday by the state Department of Public Health and Environment, is down 51 from last year’s figure. The state previously updated hospitalization figures each afternoon, but as COVID-19 cases slowed significantly, they shifted to a weekly update.

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The improvement means the state’s hospital census has fallen to its lowest reported number of confirmed patients in more than two years. Still, it represents another landmark in the state’s recent emergence from the first two years of the pandemic. On Jan. 15, for instance, the state had 1,676 people hospitalized with COVID-19. 

The turnaround is thanks in large part to Colorado’s relatively high vaccination rate and to the sheer number of people infected with the omicron variant in December, January and February. 

State and academic experts have said those high levels of immunity should translate to at least a few months of pandemic calm, short of another variant emerging that proves as disruptive as omicron or delta before it.

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That wrinkle has emerged somewhat elsewhere: An omicron subvariant has led to increasing cases in Europe, and it has become the dominant strain in the United States.

In Colorado, the seven-day average of new cases has stayed relatively flat for much of the latter half of March, sitting at some of the lowest levels since late summer 2020. The subvariant has been detected here, but state health officials said earlier this week that they were monitoring the state’s positivity rate, which has ticked upward slightly but is still well below where it was for much of the past several months.

The subvariant is not believed to be more severe than the primary strain of omicron, which itself was less severe than the delta variant.

Omicron subvariant likely to lead to uptick in COVID cases, but shouldn’t lead to surge, experts say