Polis did not specify where or how he and Reis contracted COVID-19. On November 25, he announced he would quarantine after being exposed to someone who tested positive for COVID-19, but he did not publicly say who that person was. Two days later, he and Reis tested positive. In the December 1 briefing Polis reiterated the results of recent modeling from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment that found 1 in 41 Coloradans are contagious with COVID-19.

Fauci said that the United States is seeing an increase in 100,000 to 200,000 new COVID-19 cases every day. "This is something that is quite problematic,” he said, “and to say it's challenging is to say the least.”

Given the amount of people that traveled for the Thanksgiving holiday, Fauci says we will likely see a "surge upon a surge" in cases. He advised people to avoid large personal gatherings or crowded indoor shopping during the upcoming holiday season.

Fauci predicted that a vaccine would be available to the general population by April. He said it is "extraordinary, unprecedented and quite frankly...unexpected" how quickly vaccines have been developed this year. Polis gave President Trump and others "great credit" for Operation Warp Speed.

Despite encouraging news on the vaccine front, Fauci and Polis emphasized the importance of wearing masks. "Where you really should wear masks is when you're indoors and you're in situations where you cannot avoid being very close to people," Fauci said. He compared masks to seat belts: sometimes car crashes are bad enough that seat belts can't prevent death, but they make driving safer on the whole. Masks are the same way, Fauci said. They aren't 100% effective against preventing COVID-19 from spreading, but it's better to wear one than to not. Colorado currently has a statewide mask mandate.

When asked about the distribution plan of the vaccine, Gov. Polis said there is "no way" people in prison will receive a vaccine before "members of the vulnerable population," which he indicated meant people ages 65 and above. But the governor did add that the vaccine won’t be sent to "prisoners before it goes to people who haven't committed any crimes." A recent study from the criminal justice think tank Prison Policy Initiative found that of the roughly 2.3 million people in prisons, jails, and other detention centers in the United States, nearly 500,000 (or almost 22%) of them have not been convicted of a crime and are awaiting trial.

Asked by a reporter on the call about Denver Mayor Hancock's travel during the Thanksgiving holiday, Fauci didn’t mention Hancock by name, but said "mixed messaging" by authority figures is not helpful and can be detrimental to how seriously people take public health guidelines.

When it comes to closures to prevent the spread of COVID-19, Fauci had a brief message: “Close the bars, open the schools.” He said nationwide contact tracing data shows that bars and indoor seating at restaurants are responsible for more COVID-19 spread than schools. Polis added that he supports the motto.

However, many major school districts in Colorado are still conducting remote instruction. Denver Public Schools, for example, announced November 18 that the increasing COVID-19 cases in the Denver area created staffing shortages that made in-person instruction too difficult to manage.

The latest data from CPDHE show more than 100 active COVID-19 outbreaks at schools K-12.