As of March 22, 2023, 15,007 Coloradans have now died in the coronavirus pandemic.
Colorado’s first COVID-19 death was an El Paso County woman in her 80s who died in a Colorado Springs hospital on March 13, 2020.
Since then, the pandemic has claimed enough people to fill Red Rocks Amphitheatre one and a half times.
“Fifteen thousand deaths is just terrible and it kind of forces us to reflect on what’s happened,” said Dr. Anuj Mehta, a pulmonary care physician at Denver Health, and member of the Colorado Vaccine Equity Taskforce.
Reaching this milestone puts other changes in perspective.
“COVID has done so much more than just killed people. It’s impacted people’s lives,” Mehta said. That includes children who lost a parent or grandparent, those suffering from long COVID and the other social and economic ripple effects of a global pandemic.