A majority of visitors to the Aspen area are unvaccinated, which may partially explain why Pitkin County has a much higher rate of vaccinated residents testing positive for COVID-19 than public health officials expected.
With summer tourism peaking and the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant, Aspen and the Valley are seeing an uptick in COVID-19 cases and local health officials are concerned.
People walk along Main St. in downtown Aspen in the city’s designated outdoor mask zones on Tuesday, April 27, 2021. (Kelsey Brunner/The Aspen Times)
Whether local, state or federal, the facemask announcements came flying at a fast and furious pace at the end of this week.
First, on Thursday came news from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control that fully vaccinated Americans could chuck the ubiquitous facemask, both outdoors and indoors, that everyone’s gotten used to wearing during the last year, and deep-six the social distancing. Some exceptions apply – most notably public travel – but the announcement felt like a long time coming.
The Aspen Times
The Aspen Music Festival and School will charge audience members to sit on the lawn outside of the Benedict Music Tent this summer, organizers announced Thursday.
Seating on the listening lawn for which people bring their own blankets, chairs and refreshments has traditionally been a free offering. The reservation fee will only be in place for the 2021 season.
Alan Fletcher, president and CEO of the Aspen Music Festival and School, told members of the Pitkin County Board of Health on Thursday that lawn seating is usually a “free for all,” which is challenging to deal with under COVID protocols.
The presence of variants of COVID-19 in Pitkin County will remain unconfirmed after the state public health lab was unable to sequence the samples in question, an official said this week.
The samples from two Pitkin County residents and one other person who works in the county did not contain enough viral load to be analyzed and sequenced, said Josh Vance, the county’s epidemiologist. But based on subsequent testing, he said he’s confident any risk to the community has passed.
“We feel we’ve been able to contain the outbreak here,” Vance told members of the Pitkin County Board of Health on Thursday. “We feel like we’ve been able to close it out for now.”