In many ways, it's a lot like the experiences of families of patients in the intensive care unit with Covid-19, said Dr. Timothy Amass, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.
Dr. Liz Chamberlain, a licensed psychologist with CU Anschutz Health and Wellness, is one of many forced to put patients on a waitlist. “The numbers are so telling that people continue to need mental health help and continue to seek it. There’s so much loss that people have had of just normal events, and life is hard to navigate anyway,” said Chamberlain.
Sean O’Leary, a professor of pediatrics and infectious diseases at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and vice chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases, pointed out that even with two doses, Moderna’s vaccine appears to protect children from serious disease. “I think we can expect that it is going to offer higher protection against the more severe outcomes, which is really our ultimate goal,” he said.
There could also be some cases of BA.2 in the U.S. that aren’t being reported since the subvariant is more difficult to detect, Payal Kohli, M.D., assistant clinical professor of medicine at University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus, said.
It’s possible that the increased positivity rate in those mountain communities reflects that the state has scaled back testing, so that those who don’t feel sick are unlikely to go to the effort of finding a location, said Talia Quandelacy, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Colorado School of Public Health.
The trick moving forward will be scaling that and other systems up and down as needed, said Dr. Lisa Miller, a professor of epidemiology at the Colorado School of Public Health. “We’ve made huge advances as far as therapy and treatment for COVID-19, vaccines for COVID-19, the way we monitor it,” Miller said.
“What we wanted to better understand was, how can we predict which of these kids was going to end up in the ICU and get really sick so that we could be more aggressive with their treatment up front,” said Dr. Blake Martin, a pediatrician and associate professor at CU School of Medicine.
Experts said that holiday activities pose more risk in large crowds, indoors and in poorly ventilated spaces where the virus spreads more easily. People should gather outdoors, wear masks and perform rapid tests before meeting unvaccinated family and friends and before returning to work, said Joshua Barocas, associate professor of medicine at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.
