In 2020, the holiday season preceded the worst COVID-19 surge the U.S. has faced since the pandemic began.
Last year, the increase in daily virus cases began to accelerate in early December before peaking at more than 250,000 every day in early January.
Now, Covid cases are rising once again in the U.S., with a seven-day rolling average of 95,000, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
This had led some experts to fear another winter surge is just around the corner.
Dr Richard Zane, the chief innovation officer at University of Colorado Health (UC Health), told DailyMail.com that because of the different circumstances of this year's wave when compared to last, hospitals may struggle to deal with the surge even more this time around.
Some Colorado hospitals have already reached a breaking point, according to UC Health's Dr Richard Zane, and if things get worse the upcoming holiday surge could overwhelm the state's healthcare system
One Chicago-base epidemiologist believes his state may have already put the worst of the pandemic behind them. Due to the high vaccination rate, combined with the amount of people with natural immunity, and access to medical resources, he believes Chicago should be ok going forward. He still urges residents of the city to protect themselves by getting vaccinated, though
Zane told DailyMail.com that, unlike last year, the Covid ward at his hospital is having to share resources with other wings of the hospital in 2021.
While cases in the Denver area, where UC Health operates more than a dozen facilities, are not likely to reach the same heights this year as last year, dealing with those cases may be tougher for hospitals.
In 2020, treating Covid patients was an all hands-on-deck approach.
A majority of non-Covid medical treatments were canceled or rescheduled, and a vast majority of the staff, beds and equipment was dedicated to fighting the virus.
With the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines, many have felt comfortable returning to the hospital for other treatments, and other parts of hospitals have begun to open again - siphoning off available resources.
Colorado is already experiencing an uptick of cases in mid-to-late November.
'The surge is already harder for Colorado hospitals than it was last year,' Zane said.
Cases in the state have reached 3,000 per day on average, well above the 1,700 per day recorded at the peak of summer 2021 surge fueled by the Delta variant.
Around Thanksgiving time last year, the state was at the peak of its winter Covid surge, recording over 5,500 new cases per day.
‘I can't emphasize this enough: Hospitals in Colorado have never been this crowded or this busy in the history of the pandemic,' he said.
While Colorado as a whole has a high vaccination rate, with more than 70 percent of residents having received at least one vaccine dose, Zane says some specific communities around the state still have extremely low rates.
Counties on the eastern half of the state, and especially those that border Kansas and Nebraska, have low vaccination rates in particular.
Because UC Health hospitals take overflow patients from elsewhere, Zane says he is seeing many unvaccinated people from specific communities across the state with low vaccination rates show up at his hospital.
'There is a solid correlation between vaccination and the overwhelming of hospitals,' he said.
'There is no ambiguity. A majority of patients in the hospital are unvaccinated.'
He urges people to get vaccinated if they have not already, and to get their booster shots if they are eligible.
'The one thing that can prevent a post holiday surge is people getting boosters and time is running out,' Zane said.
If unvaccinated people get their shots, transmission of the
