Governor Polis COVID-19 Update April 29, 2020Topline Update We currently have 14,758 cases, 766 deaths, and 2,621 hospitalizations out of 69,449 completed tests. We are thinking of these families and communities during these trying times. This case data is broken down by various categories, is updated daily and can be found here. Daily growth in cases has declined. As of yesterday, the growth rate is down to 2.8%. We are continuing to see positive results on the hospitalization side. The daily growth in hospitalizations as of yesterday was 0.4%. But we need to keep these numbers moving in the right direction. And that means continuing to stay home, wear masks, and adhere to the “Safer-at-Home” order that went into effect on Monday. Colorado Testing Goals Today the Governor provided an update on the state’s testing capability and infrastructure, and our plans to scale up our epidemiological work. When this crisis began, we could only run 160 tests a day. Today we are running 3,000 tests per day. Our goal, between public and private partners, is to grow our daily capacity in early May to 5,000 and continue to scale up from there from 8,500+ tests/day if needed by the end of May. How do we meet this goal?
Testing Supplies Update The Governor provided an update on where we are in terms of testing supply numbers. Keep in mind that this is a snapshot of a constantly changing situation because as soon as we get our hands on equipment, it is distributed to ensure more testing. Right now we have:
Yesterday, the Governor was on a call with the White House where we were promised:
By May 11, we expect to have secured
And by the end of may, we expect to have secured
We want to thank our innovation response team for their incredible work. There is fierce competition in this market to get this equipment and everyone in the world is trying to get it. And in a matter of weeks we have stepped up to fill the gap on both sourcing and distribution which has allowed us to make significant progress. We expect that over time, supply chain issues will be resolved, and the supply of testing equipment will be able to keep up with the demand. 4 types of testing The Governor spoke about increasing the availability of testing. To hit our goal -- we need to provide a variety of sites across the state and meet people where they are. There are four types of testing sites in Colorado where you can get COVID testing:
Who can get tested? Right now here’s who can get tested:
By mid-May, we want to continue to test all of these groups:
And we want to be able to test ALL symptomatic community members who want it, and have the capacity for broader outbreak testing. Finally as we continue to scale, we will build a robust program to prevent hotspots in senior, long term care, and congregate care facilities, and other vulnerable populations like people experiencing homelessness. Epidemiological Update In order for this strategy to be successful, we need to ramp up our epidemiological capacity. That starts with bringing in more trained professionals to do this important work. CDPHE has grown its COVID-19 epidemic response team from 31 staff to 56, a near doubling of the staff. This includes:
We are building a first in the country COVID Navigator Program, to establish wrap-around supports for those who are sick. We are hiring staff for this effort as well. All of the epidemiological staff at the state level will work in collaboration with local public health agencies and their epidemiological teams. But if we want the best epidemiological response that we can have -- it requires more than just staff. We need to bring all of the technological tools we can to bear. In partnership with Google + MTX, we’ve launched a new symptom tracker to help you determine if you need to seek out a test or medical help, to guide you on next steps, and to help our epidemiologists determine if there’s an outbreak in your area and respond accordingly. This sort of self-reporting is happening across our state and it’s helping to save lives. We have already had over 1,000 entries into the tracker that’s providing us with valuable information. The tracker consists of a short survey on covid19.colorado.gov where you submit your symptoms. You can opt into text message support which will direct you to various resources, from telemedicine to behavioral health support. We’re also collecting data from ERs on patient symptoms so we can track which communities are the most impacted. All of these things working in concert will help us achieve success in this next phase:
And together, with Safer-at-Home for most of the population, Stay-at-home for vulnerable populations, wearing face coverings, and other distancing and hygienic steps -- we can continue to make progress in our fight against this deadly virus and hopefully, begin to remove even more barriers in our society and our economy. COVID Health Equity Response Team The racial data that we are releasing shows that some communities of color are more likely to suffer from COVID and the impacts of the disease. This is likely a proxy for other societal inequities because historically people of color have unequal access to health care, economic opportunity, and benefits, all of which impact their ability to deal with COVID and the surrounding crisis. So a couple of weeks ago we announced that we would be setting up a COVID health equity response team to:
Click here to learn more about the Health Equity Response Team.
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