Dr. Kyle Annen is the medical director of transfusion services at Children’s Hospital Colorado, based on the University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora. Her team collected its first units of plasma from recovered COVID-19 patients on March 31, four days after the FDA approved its experimental use in serious COVID-19 cases.
Overall, the indicators are “encouraging,” said Beth Carlton, an associate professor of environmental and occupational health at the Colorado School of Public Health. The concern is that people will relax their precautions over Labor Day weekend, just as schools and universities are bringing their students back, she said. Experts still don’t know what caused an increase in cases and hospitalizations in July, but one theory is that the virus spread at Independence Day celebrations.
We saw something like that happen as states and cities required people to stay home or wear masks, and as people reacted to a resurgence in cases by avoiding high-risk settings, said Beth Carlton, an associate professor of environmental and occupational health at the Colorado School of Public Health. … Katie Colborn, research director for surgical outcomes and applied research on CU’s Anschutz Medical Campus, had previously worked on forecasting malaria outbreaks in countries where the disease is common.
“I think one of the big concerns around flying that could be addressed is all the other steps around flying,” said Elizabeth Carlton, an associate professor with the Colorado School of Public Health at the University of Colorado Anschutz. “How do you get to the airport? Is it in an Uber or Lyft? Once you’re in the airport is there congestion and crowds?”
“They’re doing the right things in identifying who’s infected, making sure those people are isolated, doing contract tracing, quarantining,” said Dr. Lisa Miller, a professor of epidemiology at Colorado School of Public Health. “Those are all very important, but unless they can figure out exactly what’s gone wrong with each outbreak — and correct it — then it seems like they run the risk of this continuing.”
“What happens in schools is going to be reflective of the broader community no matter how good a job we do in implementing the mitigation measures,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, professor and pediatric infectious disease specialist at the University of Colorado’s School of Medicine in Aurora. “If we see that in mid-August we are seeing similar levels of disease to what we’re seeing in Texas and Arizona, I don’t know that it’s safe to open schools at that point because there’s so much virus circulating.”
“We’re talking about degrees of risk in all these things, and I think sometimes that gets lost,” said Dr. Lisa Miller, a professor of epidemiology at the Colorado School of Public Health. “It’s not like there’s a black-and-white line between you’re either over 65 and you’re at risk or you’re under 65 and you’re not.”
Second lady Karen Pence stopped in Aurora on Thursday to meet military veterans and hear about an art therapy program at the Anschutz Medical Campus. Pence, a former art teacher and the wife of Vice President Mike Pence, heard from three veterans, their families and experts at the Marcus Institute for Brain Health, which cares for and researches traumatic brain injuries, primarily in veterans.
