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This is a transmission electron micrograph of particles from the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, isolated from a patient. The image was captured and color-enhanced at the NIAID Integrated Research Facility in Fort Detrick, Maryland. (Provided by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases)

Two more people have died from the new coronavirus in Colorado, bringing the state’s death toll to four.

COVID-19 IN COLORADO

The latest from the coronavirus outbreak in Colorado:

  • MAP: Cases and deaths in Colorado.
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The first victim was a man in his 60s from El Paso County, public health officials said Thursday. He was connected to a woman — in her 80s and also from El Paso County — who died from the disease last week. She was the state’s first death.

The second was a resident of Crowley County, just east of Pueblo, who was older and “had other multiple chronic medical conditions,” according to the neighboring Otero County Health Department.

A news release said the Crowley County decedent “was in the high-risk group.”

El Paso County Public Health would not elaborate Thursday on how the two coronavirus deaths were linked, but the agency sent out a bulletin after the first fatality asking people who attended the following games at the Colorado Springs Bridge Center to be especially vigilant:

  • 02/27/2020  Thursday Evening Unit Pairs
  • 02/28/2020  Friday Morning Pairs
  • 02/29/2020 299er Pairs
  • 02/29/2020 299er Pairs
  • 03/01/2020 299er Swiss
  • 03/03/2020 499ers

The agency said investigators were “extremely concerned about possible transmission both at the tournament and in communities after they went home.”

“Many attendees were older people who might be especially vulnerable to severe illness from COVID-19,” Kimberly Pattison, El Paso County Public Health’s communicable disease program manager, said in a statement posted March 14.

The El Paso County woman’s death was announced on March 13.

On Tuesday, Colorado announced the second death attributable to the coronavirus: A Weld County man in his 70s.

More than 200 people have tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, in Colorado. That includes one state lawmaker, whose results were returned on Thursday.

Jesse Paul is a Denver-based political reporter and editor at The Colorado Sun, covering the state legislature, Congress and local politics. He is the author of The Unaffiliated newsletter and also occasionally fills in on breaking news coverage....