{"id":2455824,"date":"2020-03-15T22:08:00","date_gmt":"2020-03-16T04:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/news\/pitkin-county-cant-gauge-coronavirus-severity-without-testing\/"},"modified":"2020-03-16T08:24:59","modified_gmt":"2020-03-16T14:24:59","slug":"pitkin-county-cant-gauge-coronavirus-severity-without-testing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/pitkin-county-cant-gauge-coronavirus-severity-without-testing\/","title":{"rendered":"Pitkin County can\u2019t gauge coronavirus severity without testing"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2019\/02\/facebook-thumbnail-1200.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\"><\/div>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Pitkin County\u2019s decision to suspend all COVID-19 testing unless a person is exhibiting symptoms severe enough to require hospitalization is reckless and irresponsible. Pitkin County\u2019s approach directly contradicts the recommendations of CDC, which recommends testing for persons who, within 14 days of symptom onset have had close contact with a \u201csuspected or laboratory confirmed COVID-19 patient, or who have a history of travel from affected geographic areas within 14 days of their symptom onset.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Right now, many in our community have likely had contact with a \u201csuspected\u201d person with COVID-19, and it appears that we could be living in an \u201caffected geographic area,\u201d as well, except that our own COVID-19 statistics are being distorted because of a refusal to test symptomatic individuals, unless they require hospitalization. Without a confirmed positive COVID-19 test, the likelihood of a person with mild symptoms self-isolating for 14 days is pretty remote. Instead, they will be out and about in our community infecting countless others, including tourists who will then be infecting others during their subsequent travels and then back in their home communities.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">We have tourists who are making travel decisions based on reported COVID-19 statistics. While accurate COVID-19 statistics are likely to deter tourists in the short run, given Aspen\u2019s very limited health care resources for serious infectious disease, it would seem that the responsible course of action would be to offer greater access to testing, as means to identify and isolate infected persons and avoid further spread of the virus.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND Letter Name\">Denise Malcolm<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND Letter Title\">Aspen<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/opinion\/letters-to-the-editor\/pitkin-county-cant-gauge-coronavirus-severity-without-testing\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pitkin County\u2019s decision to suspend all COVID-19 testing unless a person is exhibiting symptoms severe enough to require hospitalization is reckless and irresponsible. Pitkin County\u2019s approach directly contradicts the recommendations of CDC, which recommends testing for persons who, within 14 days of symptom onset have had close contact with a \u201csuspected or laboratory confirmed COVID-19 [&hellip;]<\/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":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2455824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-18 10:27:46","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":"KSPN The Valley&#039;s Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2455824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2455824"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2455824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2455842,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2455824\/revisions\/2455842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2455824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2455824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2455824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}