Oriana Cruz is a graduate from the College of Nursing at the University of Colorado. She is filling in at a hard-hit hospital in New York to try to help contain the novel coronavirus. “I actually am in the medical intensive care unit. By the time they get to the floor than I am on, they have already been through the emergency department and the people that I’m taking care of are really, really, really sick,” Cruz said.
“This is a common public health tool that’s been used for decades if not centuries,” said Dr. Lisa Miller, an epidemiology professor at the Colorado School of Public Health and a former top leader at CDPHE. But scaling up to tackle a disease as fast-moving and widespread as COVID-19, Miller said, “That’s something we haven’t done before.”
The nightly howl is a primal affirmation that provides a moment’s bright spot each evening by declaring, collectively: We shall prevail, said Dr. Scott Cypers, director of Stress and Anxiety programs at the Helen and Arthur E. Johnson Depression Center at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. It’s a way to take back some of the control that the pandemic-forced social isolation has forced everyone to give up
IgM “is the initial attack force,” Kyle Annen, professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine on the Anschutz Medical Campus, tells Mic. Using a blood sample, an antibody test for the novel coronavirus would “essentially identify whether a person that has been infected… has in fact made those antibodies,” Annen says.
“We can count the most visible tip of the iceberg in the case counts and presumably the deaths are pretty accurate,” said Jonathan Samet, dean and professor of the Colorado School of Public Health. “We know that those case counts are an undercount, and they clearly are going to miss most of the asymptomatic people.”
Elizabeth Carlton, an assistant professor at the Colorado School of Public Health and a researcher on the state’s modeling team, agreed that data suggests “things may be slowing down” and that public health officials were waiting to see whether those trends hold in coming days. She said there is strong evidence social distancing measures are having a positive effect.
"Putting a face mask on does not mean that you stop the other practices," said May Chu, a clinical professor in epidemiology at the Colorado School of Public Health on the Anschutz Medical Campus who was not involved in either new study. "It does not mean you get closer to people, it does not mean you don't have to wash your hands as often and you can touch your face. All of that still is in place, this is just an add-on."
Other coronaviruses that affect humans can invade the central nervous system, so it makes sense COVID-19 may have neurologic manifestations, Dr. Kenneth Tyler, chair of neurology at University of Colorado School of Medicine, told Neurology Today, a publication of the American Academy of Neurology.
