Sunrise Community Health leadership recently took about half an hour to pause and reflect on all the hardships, changes and successes of the past year, about one year after local health and government officials really started to brace for COVID-19.
“Then we had to run and figure out how we’re scheduling vaccine clinics,” said CEO Mitzi Moran.
Friday marks the one-year anniversary of Colorado officials announcing the presence of COVID-19 in the state. To honor the nearly 6,000 Coloradans lost to the virus, Gov. Jared Polis has invited all Coloradans to participate in a statewide Evening of Remembrance. Those with building lights are encouraged to turn them magenta at 6 p.m. A virtual remembrance ceremony will begin at 6:30 p.m. The ceremony will be broadcast through television, digital platforms and the governor’s Facebook page.
Moran said COVID first started to show up on her radar around January and February of 2020. On March 2, 2020, Sunrise leaders met to plan for the coming storm.
“Even the best plans … we didn’t expect what happened and as fast as it happened,” Moran said.
That same day, Greeley City Manager Roy Otto returned from a weeklong training conference in Virginia, where he remembers seeing reports of the virus. He contacted another city leader to see that they had dusted off the pandemic response portion of the city’s emergency operations plan. On his return, they began working on continuity plans to keep the city functioning.
On March 6, 2020, Banner Health admitted the first confirmed COVID-19 patient in northern Colorado at its Fort Collins Medical Center. They set up their emergency operations team nine days later.
Dr. Diana Breyer, who specializes in critical care and pulmonology and serves as UCHealth’s chief quality officer in northern Colorado, said their health system started getting hit with patients at the end of March. She knew there had always been the threat of a pandemic, as threats like SARS and Ebola came and went, but didn’t quite know what to expect with COVID-19.
“I think that we were always aware of (the possibility), but until you have something like this happen, I think it is hard to imagine how much it’s going to affect everyone’s life,” Breyer said.
Otto said the day he remembers most from those early days of the pandemic was when state officials announced the first death, on March 13. He remembers the situation becoming more somber and serious with the death announcement. That same day, Weld County announced its first two cases. That’s when Greeley officials triggered the emergency declaration and started trying to assess shutdowns and make sense of all the data associated with COVID-19. The pandemic health emergency declaration was issued the following Monday.
By late March, Sunrise leaders implemented a number of changes to prevent viral spread and maximize efficiency of treatment, including a grab-and-go pharmacy, telehealth visits and condensed service locations to maximize personal protective equipment (PPE) and staffing resources. Similar changes were undertaken at other health systems as officials adapted operations around the newly developing information about the virus.
Locally, the first peak came in late March and April. UCHealth had 263 hospitalized patients with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 on April 7. Sunrise officials in April saw 84% of their walk-in patients coming in with respiratory needs. On average over the past year, about 44% of walk-in patients had respiratory needs. Breyer said there was a lot of uncertainty and some fear in those early stages, but the work then helped lay the foundation for better treatment when another surge came in the fall.
“There was a little bit of underlying anxiety around, ‘Are we going to get sick?’ and also around, ‘How do we advise these patients?’ ” Breyer said. “When we got through the surge in March and were able to reflect on things … we learned a lot.”
For care providers, who had concerns about falling ill and spreading the disease, the realization came that the PPE was working. In her group of 16 critical-care doctors who care for ICU patients, Breyer said not a single one contracted the virus. For patients, a number of critical lessons were learned: steroids could aid hospitalized patients who required oxygen; trying to keep patients off ventilators could help prevent a lengthier stay on the machines; high doses of oxygen could help some patients avoid being put on a ventilator altogether; and for those who required intubation, placing them on their stomachs for extended periods could improve their condition. Other treatment methods, like the use of hydroxychloroquine, didn’t pan out and are no longer used for COVID-19 treatment.
“We started to get the things that were working really well incorporated into what we were doing for patients,” she said.
The benefits of that experience are evident in UCHealth’s improved survival rates of COVID-19 patients. In the spring, about 87.5% of hospitalized patients were surviving. In the fall — when the system hit a peak of 469 patients on Dec. 1 — about 94% of patients were surviving. Hospital patients also had shorter stays in the fall, averaging about six days, compared to an average of 11 in the spring.
Otto said the pandemic has been an interesting test of the city’s emergency operations, which are usually meant to address incidents with a short duration, such as a tornado or rail accident. Officials and staff have had to closely watch the data and learn how to react to those numbers. Otto said Dan Frazen, the city’s emergency manager, was new to the position as the pandemic hit, but has done a wonderful job as he learned under fire.
For the city, some operations never ceased, such as public safety operations and public works, as well as water and sewer services. Other work, like community development, had to be adapted for remote work. State requirements shutting down events and non-essential work really put the Culture, Parks and Recreation Department through the ringer, Otto said.
Breyer, one of the first COVID-19 vaccine recipients in the state, remembers “a very happy day” at Poudre Valley Hospital when the first vaccine doses arrived. Though there’s still a way to go before getting enough people protected to get back to some sense of normal, progress is being made with vaccine administration.
“I think the introduction of the vaccine and availability of it increasing is going to be instrumental in reducing the death toll across the country, as well as Weld County, and hopefully getting back to some type of normal in everyone’s daily lives,” said Mark Lawley, executive director of the Weld County Department of Public Health and Environment. “As vaccines become available and we learn more about the virus itself, it’s allowed us to understand and put in specific measures to help reduce the spread and address the larger public health issue around it.”
That’s why officials like Moran haven’t had too much time to reflect. Officials are zeroed in on immunizing as many people as want it, as well as addressing concerns for those who don’t. Moran said navigating the logistics of vaccine distribution, which occasionally leaves some providers like Sunrise with excess doses or a lack of doses, makes it tricky to reach their administration targets. Sunrise hopes to vaccinate about 2,500 people per week, Moran said.
“I think the arrival of the vaccine … is really our hope,” Breyer said. “I think it was pretty miraculous how quickly we were able to get a vaccine going for this. … I think the next 12 months are going to look a lot better than the last 12.”
Nearly 1,400 COVID-19 patients have recovered and been discharged from UCHealth’s northern Colorado hospitals. Statewide, the system has administered more than 265,000 vaccine doses to more than 160,000 people.
Banner has discharged more than 970 COVID-19 patients from its three Front Range hospitals. The system has administered more than 268,000 vaccine doses. On Feb. 25, Banner officials stood down the emergency operations team. Just more than 50 people served on their emergency operations team to help lead the health system’s COVID-19 response.
Some changes brought on by the pandemic, like the adoption of remote video meetings, may stick around, according to Otto. Though things like city council meetings aren’t likely to remain virtual themselves, the technology has helped with community outreach, he said. Otto cited recent virtual meetings about an important water project as evidence of the technology’s success, making it easier for members of the public to tune in and provide input without having to go to a certain address.
Moran is hopeful telehealth will stick around, adding that it’s a great tool to reach folks who are otherwise difficult to reach, such as homebound patients or those who can’t get into a clinic. Both health and government officials also applauded the collaboration that helped prevent disasters like an overburdened health care system.
“When we look back on the year, and we reflect about the monumental changes that we went through and the stress and the work that our team put in, it is just astounding,” Moran said. “It is nothing short of heroism how they leaned in and served during this time. We got about half an hour to pause and reflect, and then it was right back into the same kind of heroism of how we’re going to deliver vaccines.”
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Local officials reflect 1 year after COVID-19 announced in Colorado - Greeley Tribune
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