CU Anschutz In The News

All this portends a more uneven pandemic, says Dr. Fernando Holguin, a pulmonologist and critical care doctor at the Latino Research and Policy Center at the Colorado School of Public Health. He worries cases, hospitalizations and deaths will keep flaring up in less-vaccinated communities, especially predominantly Hispanic communities in parts of Colorado or other states where overall vaccination rates are poor. "They're at risk, especially moving into the fall of seeing increasing waves of infections. I think it is really critical that people really become vaccinated," Holguin said.

The tests can also be a good way to catch underlying problems in infrastructure or water supplies — like in Flint, Mich., where for years nearly 30,000 schoolchildren were exposed to water contaminated with lead after city officials began drawing water from the Flint River in 2014, according to Glenn Patterson, a professor of environmental and occupational health at the University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus.

“There’s nothing about enteroviruses that makes them love even years—they don’t have a lucky number,” says Kevin Messacar, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado and Children's Hospital Colorado who was a coauthor on that March analysis. “The model for this whole family of viruses, which is well-described, would not predict that we would wait until 2022 for an outbreak because we missed a cycle. It would say we are continually growing the pool of susceptibles who haven’t seen that virus.”

“It’s hard to answer that question definitively, I think,” said Glen Mays, the chair and a professor in the Department of Health Systems, Management & Policy in the Colorado School of Public Health at CU Anschutz. He said the drawings were novel and helped promote awareness and excitement about the vaccinations but they came after many early adopters already had gotten their shots. So it’s “really difficult to know exactly what, if any, boost it’s had.” It seems likely that the drawings, at the very least, arrested, then slowed, a significant slide in consumer interest in getting the vaccine.

Dr. Carlos Franco-Paredes, an associate professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine who has inspected immigration detention centers during the pandemic, said that several factors were to blame for the surge, including transfers of detainees between facilities, insufficient testing and lax Covid-19 safety measures. For example, he said, during a recent inspection at a center in Aurora, Colo., he saw many staff members who were not wearing face coverings properly, adding: “There is minimal to no accountability regarding their protocols.”

A CU nursing graduate is on a mission to combine art with chemo to help our youngest warriors take back control.

“It’s as if we’ve been in a war zone for the last year,” said Dr. Marc Moss, head of the Division of Pulmonary Sciences and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, who has researched burnout among hospital workers. “It’s not anyone’s fault. We have tough jobs and we see tragedy.” Hospital workers have carried out duties that they have never done before — and likely never expected they would be called on to do — before COVID-19. For example, there were radiologists working in intensive care units during the pandemic, Gold said.

Scott Harpin is an associate professor at the University of Colorado College of Nursing, which operates CU’s Family Health Services Clinic in Sheridan. Clinic director Megan Champion said volunteers like the Harpins are helping the clinic accomplish its mission of providing equitable distribution of the COVID vaccine. “The weekend vaccination clinics really did an excellent job of targeting people who were falling through the cracks because maybe they didn't have reliable internet or English was their second language, so it was more difficult to navigate,” Champion said. “Coming to get a vaccine can be scary, so seeing kids and families helps make it a warmer environment.”