GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. – Wednesday marks one month since the first COVID-19 case was announced in Mesa County and the Mesa County Health Department hosted its regularly scheduled community briefing with the latest numbers.

Jeff Kuhr, Director of the Health Department said to date, Mesa County has seen 35 positive cases, 461 negative test results, and six total hospitalizations with three of those patients still under hospital care.

The county recently began announcing the number of recovered cases and Wednesday Dr. Kuhr said the department estimates that 30 of the known 35 cases have recovered.

That estimation is based off the two week period of symptoms from the onset of the virus.

And according to Community Hospital CEO Chris Thomas, the number of patients coming in with symptoms has decreased.

“Right now patients are getting referred to testing if they have the symptoms and so we are seeing very few patients across our clinics, our primary care clinics, that are showing up with symptoms so those numbers seem to be down, which is giving us some optimism that we may be past this also, but don’t stop now, we still got to watch this,” said Dr. Kuhr.

Dr. Kuhr said the department estimates that the outbreak in Mesa County is about 2 weeks behind Denver, which has recently hit a plateau.

Some community members are curious about the weather having an impact on the viability of COVID-19.

Dr. Kuhr says that the virus was not impacted by warmer weather in countries in the southern hemisphere, which would indicate it would not be the case in the northern hemisphere.

“There’s nothing out yet that says whether that’s true or not, I guess we’ll see with time, right now there’s no indication that this is a seasonal virus,” said Dr. Kuhr.

Dr. Kuhr says the community should continue taking precautions and reminded community members to wash their masks daily with warm water and soap.