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May 2020
** National Nurses Day
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Today is National Nurses Day -- a day to thank and honor the medical heroes that are on the front lines of this crisis saving lives every single day.
Our Safer at Home guidance -- which still requires a high level of social distancing and mask-wearing -- is designed to protect our health care facilities, equipment, and most importantly -- our health care workers. Your continued compliance with these public health orders is essential if we want this phase to be successful.
Today at Governor Polis’s media briefing, Colorado Nurse Practitioner Laura Rosenthal talked about what she has been seeing on the front lines, and urged Coloradans to stay home and adhere to the Safer at Home guidelines.
Here are her remarks in full:
My name is Laura Rosenthal. I am the Vice President of the Colorado Nurses Association and a Nurse Practitioner taking care of hospitalized patients with COVID-19. I am here today to share with you the reality of what myself and thousands of other health care practitioners are experiencing here in Colorado. Not in New York, not in China, but here in our own backyard. I am also here today on National Nurses Day to ask you, actually plead, that you stay at home as much as possible and follow Colorado’s Safer at Home implementation.
COVID-19 is unlike anything I have ever seen in my 20 years as an experienced nurse. It is not an old people disease, nor a sick person disease. and although these populations are more susceptible to COVID-19, it affects ALL people. In the past six weeks, I have treated patients as young as 25 and as old as 99. I treated a previously healthy 32-year-old male in the intensive care unit struggling to breathe. Pregnant women, fathers of young children, and entire families, all hospitalized and ill. A husband who had never spent a night away from his wife and was now battling life and death on his own in the ICU, because when you are admitted into a hospital with COVID, you can’t bring anybody with you. --I will never forget talking to his wife on the phone and enduring the difficulty of when she said, “I know you can’t promise me that he will come home.” It is hard to fathom the consequences of the virus until you have seen it in someone acutely ill.
I know it is easy to believe COVID will not affect you. But it already has. It has affected all of us in Colorado.
And although you may hear Governor Polis talk about declining numbers, we need to remember it’s effect. We have seen a decrease in cases, which is the result of a successful stay at home order. It is because people observed the rules regarding social distancing and did their part by wearing facial coverings. As a result this has allowed the State of Colorado to slowly open its doors in an attempt to return to what was once normal. But, just because things seem to be going in the right direction we must not forget the intense fear we experienced over the past 6 weeks.
As the weather warms and we transition to the Safer at Home phase, now is the most crucial time for continued diligence. There is a natural need to socialize and work. And I, like many others, feel the stress of remaining at home. It is difficult mentally and physically. It is frustrating on a daily basis. We want to be out there enjoying all the amazing things Colorado has to offer. But please take caution and do it slowly and with great precaution. Remember that 30%-50% of people may continue to shed virus and not have any symptoms. Many are positive and do not have a cough or fever. There is still the potential for rapid increase in disease spread if we are not alert to our surroundings.
I ask for your continued commitment to stay at home as much as possible and to follow the Safer at Home phase through by using face coverings when out in public, continued physical distancing, and not gathering in public. There will eventually be a time when we can do this again, but we are not quite ready now. Nurses are out there fighting to protect you, and please do your part. During year 2020, the year of the Nurse, and today on National Nurses Day, your support of the nursing profession does not go unnoticed. Thank you.
** Personal Protective Equipment
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As our frontline medical professionals are working hard to save lives, the state is working hard to make sure they have the protective equipment they need -- masks, gloves, gowns, face shields, etc.
Since the Governor’s April 1st PPE update, the State of Colorado has acquired the following:
* 2,472,205 Surgical Masks
* 116,065 Face Shields
* 195,109 Gowns
* 1,640,100 Gloves
* 534,474 N95 Masks
Furthermore, we also know that our senior care facilities are particularly vulnerable to an outbreak because of the age of the population, the likelihood of underlying health conditions, and the close proximity of the residents.
So we are taking extra steps to make sure that workers in these facilities can protect themselves from this virus.
We’re working with the Colorado National Guard and CSU to do targeted testing of thousands of residents at these facilities to make sure that if there are symptomatic members of the community, that we can isolate them, do contact tracing, and better control the spread of the virus.
We are also sending two shipments, two weeks apart, of personal protective equipment to keep these facilities safe, each containing:
* 85,521 Masks
* 7,413 Eye protection
* 77,840 Gowns
* 388,733 Gloves
We hope that we can continue to make these shipments every two weeks as we get our hands on more supplies.
** Battelle Sterilization System
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We’re still working as hard as we can to obtain personal protective equipment.
Thankfully, Colorado has been the recipient of some remarkable technology that should help to ease the pressure on our equipment needs.
Colorado has received not one but two Battelle Sterilization Systems from FEMA to decontaminate thousands of N95 respirator masks using concentrated, vapor phase hydrogen peroxide.
Think of it as a massive dishwasher for these important, lifesaving, and increasingly scarce N95 masks.
The Battelle Sterilization system at the Adams County Fairgrounds is currently operational and is sterilizing N95 masks for over 100 skilled nursing centers, hospitals and other health care providers. A second system will begin operating in Montrose next week.
** CMS Funding for Telemedicine
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The State of Colorado has received $7.9 million from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for our Office of eHealth Innovation to develop more telehealth possibilities for Coloradans as we weather this crisis.
While doctors offices are some of the safest, most sterile places we can be, we still want to limit in-person interactions as much as possible to prevent the spread of coronavirus, and of course, we want to keep our medical professionals safe and healthy on the front lines.
And this is especially important when diagnosing potential COVID cases.
Many diagnoses and consultations can be carried out over a telehealth video chat session.
We encourage Coloradans to use these telehealth options by visiting covid19.colorado.gov/ and scrolling down the page to find the telehealth section.
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