Colorado has successfully 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-at-home measures have helped push the curve to the right, preventing health care facilities from being overwhelmed, Scott Bookman, the state’s incident commander for COVID-19, said on a conference call with reporters.
The state currently has excess ventilators, Bookman said, but officials are still trying to acquire more to make sure hospitals have enough when the surge does happen. He did not say how many ventilators are in use.
Officials previously have estimated there were between 900 and 1,600 ventilators in the state. Gov. Jared Polis has requested 10,000 from the federal government.
The 100 ventilators promised to Colorado by President Donald Trump on Wednesday are set to be inventoried in the next 24 hours, Mike Willis, the state’s director for the Office of Emergency Management, said on the conference call.
Over the weekend, Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator, said she was worried about new hotspots 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’s 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 hotspot 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.”
After Polis praised the state’s ramped-up testing efforts last week, officials acknowledged Thursday that testing has slumped in recent days. Following a peak of 2,287 tests run on April 4, that number fell to 1,296 on Wednesday.
A combination of state and private labs have the capability to runs 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 in order to reuse them. Colorado officials have asked the federal government for two Mattel machines which could potentially sterilize up to 100,000 N95 masks per day, Willis said.
Both 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 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 the crisis standards of care plan.
Join our Facebook group for the latest updates on coronavirus in Colorado.
