The health care system in Colorado will be overburdened unless people try to prevent the need for medical assistance in the first place by staying home, a chief medical officer said during a telephone town hall Thursday.
Despite the inevitable ramping up of cases over the next couple months with high rates of transmission, staying socially distant is slowing transmissions already, said Eric France, chief medical officer with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
“The number of tests is much lower than what we would like them to be,” France said. If you are sick and don’t have a high risk factor, such as an autoimmune deficiency, you should assume you have it and stay home and self-quarantine, France said.
In Mesa County, 105 coronavirus tests are pending, as well as 600 tests in Vail. With a large health center in Mesa County and a rush of positive results expected over the next couple of weeks, the county is preparing for an overwhelming surge on the health care system. Even the large hospitals have a limited number of ICU beds, and the number of people that contract the coronavirus is expected to grow over April, May and June, France said
“The next few weeks are going to be pivotal,” said Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Cortez, during the telephone town hall. “We, unfortunately, haven’t seen the worst.”
Jeff Kuhr, director of Mesa County Public Health, said the lack of tests is a problem, but so is the lack of equipment, such as swabs, needed to conduct the tests.
“We have 50 swabs for testing, but we need to be doing 25 tests per day. That’s how far behind we are,” Kuhr said. This is a problem across the board in Colorado, and many other states.
President Donald Trump also invoked the Defense Production Act, which allows the government to mobilize private industry to ramp up production in the name of national security. Leaders in Congress and health experts called on Trump to invoke the emergency war powers to produce more medical supplies.
It is still unclear when the production will start.
Health professionals are focusing most of their efforts on the most vulnerable, such as people 60 and older, and people with immunodeficiency. What people can do to help is stay at home and go out only if they need to, Kuhr said.
“That’s why the social-distancing component is very important,” Kuhr said. “We’re a step ahead of it, but we know what’s to come.”
France said an “innovation arm” of researchers and planners, “separate from the everyday work” of the emergency operations center, is already working on longer-term solutions, such as how to make masks locally.
People in rural areas of Colorado feel isolated, not only by the shutdown, but by a lack of easy access to information and medical care.
Tipton introduced a bill to allow the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Housing and Urban Development to share data and identify “hot spots” of potential fatal outbreaks near affordable housing units for seniors and homeless encampments. This will allow federal and local governments to develop specific, targeted responses for those populations and deliver updates faster.
Congress is expected to vote next week on another package of legislation to expand unemployment benefits for Americans suffering the economic impact of the coronavirus.
Emily Hayes is a graduate student at American University in Washington, D.C., and an intern for The Durango Herald.