CU Anschutz In The News

“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.”

“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.

Those counties shouldn’t count on it, according to Beth Carlton, an associate professor of environmental and occupational health at the Colorado School of Public Health. “If counties have low vaccination rates, now is the time to address that, especially with the delta variant,” she said.

Sean O’Leary, a pediatrician and a professor at the University of Colorado [School of Medicine], told me that families that include both kids under 12 and people who can’t be vaccinated or are at high risk for severe COVID-19 might want to be extra mindful of their kids’ exposure, because they could pass it to someone who’s not protected. He also cautioned that “we don’t really have good data yet” on how severe the Delta variant of the coronavirus, which is on track to quickly become dominant in the U.S., is in children, though it does seem to be more transmissible among people of all ages.

“If people don't like the idea of an incentive, you have to think: okay, so what are the alternatives?” said Dr. Matthew Wynia, director of the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Colorado Anschutz. “Because in the end, for many vaccines we have, if the vaccine is important, we have had to implement mandates in order to keep people vaccinated over time.”

"The results of STORM CHASER suggest that AZD7442 may be useful in preventing symptomatic COVID-19 in individuals not already infected," Myron J. Levin, M.D., professor of pediatrics and medicine at University of Colorado School of Medicine, and principal trial investigator, said in a news release.

There’s little formal research on non-monetary incentives, like drag queens, mariachi bands, churros and beer, said Glen Mays, who is chair of the Department of Health Systems, Management and Policy at the Colorado School of Public Health. But the good news is he expects even clinics that vaccinate relatively few people will generate ripple effects. “People who get vaccinated through these kinds of special events, they’re connected to friends and colleagues. And having a friend who’s been vaccinated, having a social contact, who’s been vaccinated, raises those other social contacts’ likelihood of being aware of and ultimately taking up the vaccine,” said Mays.