If you are like me, the sunshine wooed you outside last weekend.  As I made my way around town, it was fun to see the streets, shops and restaurants of Fort Collins filled with new graduates, families and more.  There was a definite buzz that “things were back to normal.”

I am excited to see our community finally making its way past the pandemic while looking ahead to economic and community recovery.  Larimer County Public Health Director Tom Gonzales reported this week the following COVID indicators – all which are trending in a very positive way:

• The one week case rate is down 47% from last week to 58 cases per 100k.
• The positivity rate is down from last week to 2.0%.
• Hospitalizations have fallen to 27 COVID patients in the hospital.
• 62% of Larimer County residents ages 16+ have received 1 vaccination dose.  Vaccinations are widely available across the county and business have an opportunity to support “pop up” clinics at their site.  Learn more here:  https://www.larimer.org/health/communicable-disease/coronavirus-covid-19/covid-19-vaccine

If it’s not already bookmarked on your desktop, you can track these stats daily on the County site:  https://www.larimer.org/health/communicable-disease/coronavirus-covid-19/larimer-county-positive-covid-19-numbers#/app.

In addition to this great news, we continue to track economic indicators that help to tell the story of recovery in Northern Colorado.  The Chamber, working with our partners across the two-county area, maintains NoCoRecovers.com and a Recovery Tracker at https://nocorecovers.com/tracker/

The Tracker was created as a tool to track the economic recovery in Northern Colorado through a selected a set of indicators that represent critical aspects of the Larimer and Weld County economies.  As well, the indicators are based on data that is accessible in a useable format, and updated frequently with little lag time.

The indicators help us to understand and address the following questions:

• Are residents engaged in the labor market and do they have jobs?
• Are regional businesses able to maintain their workforce? Are they hiring?
• Are consumers spending money in our economy?
• Are visitors coming back?
• Is our real estate market stable? Are businesses closing and leaving unoccupied commercial spaces?
• Is the construction industry active and purchasing materials to support future growth?

This list of indicators is not exhaustive but does represent well-rounded measures that can signal areas of strength or weakness in the recovery from the economic shock induced by the COVID-19 Pandemic.  We invite you to check out the information and join us as we consider economic recovery.