State’s peak pushed back to May
Stay-at-home order, social distancing appear to be flattening the curve
Colorado successfully has pushed back its expected peak in coronavirus cases until at least next month, an important shift to give health officials and hospitals more time to prepare for a potential surge in COVID-19 patients, a top state public health official said Thursday.
Social distancing and stay-athome measures have helped flatten and push the curve of cases to the right, preventing health care facilities from being overwhelmed by a spike in patients, Scott Bookman, the state’s incident commander for COVID-19, said on a conference call with reporters.
That revised timeline came as Colorado’s death toll from the global pandemic rose to 223 on Thursday, with 6,202 total confirmed coronavirus cases and 1,221 people hospitalized.
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment said the overnight spike in deaths and new positive test results — 33 and 547, respectively — was the result of many cases that are days and even weeks old being reported by counties to the state Thursday.
There also have been 54 coronavirus outbreaks at residential and nonhospital health care facilities.
Health officials have cautioned since the outbreak began that numbers will lag because of a lack of testing. There could be as many four to 10 times as many people infected with COVID-19 than show up in the state data, officials previously said and reiterated Thursday.
The state has excess ventilators, Bookman said, but officials are still trying to acquire more to make sure hospitals have enough
when the surge does happen. Health officials hope to have more specific numbers on how many ventilators they have by next week.
Officials previously have estimated there were 900 to 1,600 ventilators in the state, and Gov. Jared Polis has requested 10,000 from the federal government.
Federal ventilators
The governor previously expressed his frustration with the federal government’s role in doling out lifesaving resources, telling CNN last week that FEMA swooped in and took an order for 500 ventilators that the state worked to acquire.
In the wake of the scuttled deal, President Donald Trump on Wednesday said 100 ventilators are coming Colorado’s way, after a request by Republican Sen. Cory Gardner. Those ventilators are set to be inventoried in the next 24 hours, Mike Willis, the state’s director for the Office of Emergency Management, said.
Colorado’s Democratic congressional delegation, however, says it wants to learn more about what happened with the initial ventilator deal.
In a letter to the White House coronavirus task force released Thursday, U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse, a Democrat from Lafayette, and other members of the delegation requested increased transparency on personal protective equipment shipments and FEMA’s supply chain management process.
“As our nation continues to face unprecedented challenges from the coronavirus (COVID19) pandemic, I urge you to provide transparency that is required for states to obtain the lifesaving equipment desperately needed to combat this disease,” the letter reads, with signatures from fellow Colorado Democrats, including Sen. Michael Bennet; Rep. Ed Perlmutter, D-Arvada; Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Denver; and Rep. Jason Crow, D-Aurora.
Is Colorado a future hot spot?
During the weekend, Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator, said she was worried about new hot spots emerging for the virus around the country, including in Colorado. And on Wednesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious-disease doctor, agreed when a news anchor mentioned Colorado’s potential for the virus’ spread.
Bookman on Thursday did not say whether he agreed with those top federal officials as to whether Colorado is at risk of becoming a national hot spot for COVID-19 infections.
“We’re continuing to evaluate the modeling,” he said on the conference call. “The initial information we’re seeing is that social distancing efforts are working and the stay-at-home order is effective. We’re continuing to prepare for a surge of patients if they arrive.”
In response to Birx’s comments, a spokesman for Polis said in a statement that “the data and science tell us that communities in Colorado are certainly among areas around the country that are on the front lines of this pandemic.”
Need for more testing
After Polis praised the state’s ramped-up testing efforts last week, officials acknowledged Thursday that testing has slumped in recent days.
After a lull to 1,296 tests conducted Tuesday, that number rebounded to 2,215 on Wednesday.
A combination of state and private labs have the capability to run 10,000 tests a day, but they don’t have enough personal protection equipment and sterile swabs to collect specimens for testing, Bookman said.
The state is exploring an innovative method to deal with the equipment shortage: sanitizing masks to reuse them.
Colorado officials have asked the federal government for two Mattel machines, which could sterilize up to 100,000 N95 masks per day, Willis said.
He and Bookman stressed that Coloradans should anticipate some social distancing measures until a COVID-19 vaccine is found.
“It’s important for the public to understand some social distancing will be necessary as we come out of the first wave,” Willis said. “We still will need to change some of our habits … and we can expect to be encouraged to use social distancing for the foreseeable future.”
Polis on Thursday also extended Colorado’s emergency disaster declaration for an additional 30 days, allowing the state to access additional resources and continue authorizing the crisis standards of the care plan.