As Dr. Leon Kelly stood before the El Paso County commissioners Tuesday, he likened the fight against the novel coronavirus to a boxing match.
“It’s a 12-round title belt,” said Kelly, the deputy medical director of El Paso County Public Health. “And at the opening bell, we kinda got punched in the mouth a little bit.”
El Paso County is home to the nation’s sixth-highest fatality rate from COVID-19, the highly infectious respiratory disease caused by the virus at the heart of the global pandemic. At least 13 people have died of the new coronavirus in El Paso County, the most in Colorado.
And it all started at a bridge tournament in Colorado Springs.
On Tuesday, Kelly gave the most insight thus far into how one woman who’d contracted the illness spread into a series of cases that has led to at least four deaths in the county. And he described the heroic efforts taken to cut the illness off before it could do more damage.
After the woman in her 80s died on March 13, El Paso County health officials learned that she had attended a bridge tournament earlier in the month. They scrambled to identify everyone who attended the tournament, realizing that 150 people could hav