{"id":1318780,"date":"2020-03-16T17:13:15","date_gmt":"2020-03-16T23:13:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vaildaily.com\/?p=475053"},"modified":"2020-03-17T07:44:53","modified_gmt":"2020-03-17T13:44:53","slug":"state-covid-19-testing-overwhelmed-impacting-eagle-county-hot-spot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/state-covid-19-testing-overwhelmed-impacting-eagle-county-hot-spot\/","title":{"rendered":"State COVID-19 testing \u2018overwhelmed,\u2019 impacting Eagle County hot spot"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Vail Health’s COVID-19 testing facility in Gypsum was the first of its kind in the state. As of Monday afternoon, Vail Health was awaiting results on more than 200 tests sent to the state lab. <\/strong>
Courtesy Vail Health<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

The volume of testing for the COVID-19 virus has overwhelmed the Colorado public health lab, the state public health incident commander for the disease admitted Monday, which explains why Vail Health was still waiting on more than 200 test results as of Monday afternoon.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we are doing everything we can at the state lab to work through the backlog,\u201d Scott Bookman said. \u201cThe volume of testing that has been required in response to this incident has been overwhelming. We have not had as much support from our private partners as we expected to have.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bookman said that the state lab can only process about 250 tests a day, while private labs seem to be more focused on working with clinical partners. Even though the state lab is working 24 hours a day and hiring more staff, it simply cannot keep up with the demand as the outbreak spreads across the state and particularly into hard-hit mountain areas.<\/p>\n

\u201cVail Health has submitted more than 400 samples to the state lab for COVID-19 testing, with more than 200 results still pending,\u201d Vail Health officials said in an email statement Monday. \u201cAs a result, Vail Health has begun to send samples for testing to private commercial labs.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Bookman said even those private labs in Colorado are taking multiple days to process tests.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe volume of testing continues to overwhelm the capacity of any of our systems,\u201d Bookman said. \u201cThe turnaround times of our state lab are several days now, and turnaround times at LabCorp and Quest continue to also be three to four days. That is a weakness in the system.\u201d<\/p>\n

The state is sending a mobile lab and the National Guard to Telluride on Monday to begin surveillance testing of an area that hasn\u2019t yet been hit as hard as Eagle, Summit, Pitkin and Gunnison counties, where the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment on Sunday strongly recommended social distancing<\/a> to prevent the spread of COVID-19.<\/p>\n

Bookman was asked why the state is prioritizing mobile testing in Telluride and not Eagle County.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reality of it at this point in the Eagle County area is that there is widespread community transmission, and the goal of the mobile lab is to go to other locations to inform our epidemiologists on potential growing areas of spread so that we can put the appropriate resources in the appropriate places,\u201d Bookman said of Eagle County, where on Sunday there were as many cases (24) as Denver \u2014 tied for most in the state.<\/p>\n

The mobile lab and National Guard will head to Routt County later in the week to try to get a better sense of where the disease is spreading. Locally, that means people need to hunker down and limit their contacts to immediate family members, officials said.<\/p>\n

County outlines shift in testing<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Eagle County sent out this reminder on Monday: Testing is not necessary for mild cases. People with symptoms should self-report by filling out a symptoms report form here<\/a>. Social distancing is strongly encouraged to help minimize spread of COVID-19. Visit ecemergency.org for more info.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur hospital has said that they are struggling with large employers who have had a case and then they\u2019re making all their employees go get tested before they can come back to work, and we can\u2019t handle it,\u201d Eagle County spokeswoman Kris Widlak said over the weekend before the local ski areas shut down. \u201cThe hospital system and the medical providers cannot handle that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vail Health praised the efforts of the county thus far.<\/p>\n

\u201cVail Health is grateful for the leadership and collaboration shown by Eagle County and Eagle County Public Health. Their proactive decision to declare a state of emergency on March 7 has proven to be a terrific administrative tool, allowing the Eagle County to receive additional medical supplies from the state prior to other counties,\u201d Vail Health officials stated.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

Widlak emphasized that the local health care system and its testing efforts could become overwhelmed on several fronts if people do not adhere to social distancing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt could be all of it at any given time,\u201d Widlak said. \u201cIt could be the actual personnel. It could be the personal protective equipment they have to wear while their testing and it can be test kits. And I don\u2019t know where the levels are of any of those things. We just know that there\u2019s three different ways we could get overwhelmed with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

State response<\/h2>\n

The state on Monday announced the hiring of 50 new nurses from the Freedom Health Care Staffing Company, trained in providing care in crisis situations. They will be staffing both testing and health care facilities around the state and are funded in part by some of the $3 million from the Disaster Emergency Fund ordered by Gov. Jared Polis\u2019 executive order.<\/p>\n

Because of that order and other executive authorities granted to the governor by the statewide disaster declaration, state Rep. Dylan Roberts of Avon, who represents Eagle and Routt counties, said the legislature did not do any COVID-19 budgeting before taking an unprecedented emergency recess for the next two weeks.<\/p>\n

Roberts, who is sheltering in Denver to adhere to recent CDPHE guidelines concerning mountain counties, pleaded with residents of hard-hit mountain towns to adhere to social distancing.<\/p>\n

\u201cCoronavirus is different than the flu or a bad cold. It is significantly more contagious and has a significantly higher mortality rate, particularly for those people in at-risk health categories and senior citizens,\u201d Roberts said. \u201cAnd so even if you\u2019re not in one of those categories, you have a personal responsibility to keep our community safe and be respectful of your neighbors and community members who are in those at-risk categories.\u201d<\/p>\n

State Sen. Kerry Donovan of Vail echoed Roberts\u2019 sentiments.<\/p>\n

via:: Vail Daily<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vail Health’s COVID-19 testing facility in Gypsum was the first of its kind in the state. As of Monday afternoon, Vail Health was awaiting results on more than 200 tests sent to the state lab. Courtesy Vail Health The volume of testing for the COVID-19 virus has overwhelmed the Colorado public health lab, the state […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1318780","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-19 17:46:43","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1318780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1318780"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1318780\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1318799,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1318780\/revisions\/1318799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1318780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1318780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1318780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}