Greeley Emergency Manager: ICUs at North Colorado Medical Center, UCHealth Greeley, both at capacity

By Kelly Ragan

Weld County’s two hospitals are both at capacity, according to Dan Frazen, Greeley’s Emergency Manager, meaning there isn’t much wiggle room if COVID-19 spreads.

And medical experts are predicting an increase in cases, which could overwhelm Greeley’s hospitals.

“They are utilizing travel nurses,” Frazen said. “It’s just a busy season for ICUs in general, but emergency rooms, specifically at UCHealth, have been very full.” 

Not all (or even most) of those cases are COVID-19-related, with 22 Covid patients at North Colorado Medical Center  and 17 at UCHealth – but for context, last year at this time, the two hospitals had 10 and five Covid cases, respectively. 

Frazen said there were at least two Covid deaths in Greeley in September. Frazen said the community testing site at the University of Northern Colorado has been so busy that the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment approached the city to set up additional community testing sites. 

At the board meeting Tuesday, Frazen said the city is monitoring three main data points. If the threshold for all three are met at the same time, it will trigger action within the city.

Those data points include: 

• Number of city employees infected with Covid (the threshold is 12). 

• Hospitalization rate per 100,000 (the threshold is 3.0).

• New cases per day (threshold is 60 for three consecutive days).

Frazen said at different points, all three of these thresholds were met, though not at the same time. Raymond Lee, interim city manager, said that if all three criteria were met, he would likely instate a mask-mandate for city employees and reduce capacity within city buildings. 

Zoom out

At a press conference Wednesday, Banner Health’s Chief Clinical Officer Marjorie Bessel said that in general, Banner hospitals have seen a plateau in Covid hospitalizations in Arizona and Colorado in recent weeks. 

“While we are pleased to no longer see exponential growth in our markets, I will point out that this is a very high plateau,” she said. “The duration has extended for much longer than we saw in prior surges, when cases peaked and then quickly descended.” 

The scary thing is Banner’s models predicted the long plateau followed by a continued increase in cases, she said. 

Bessel also noted that across the Banner system, there are about 1,000 core nursing positions open. The system is also recruiting 537 contract workers ranging from nursing to respiratory therapist and more. 

According to a UCHealth news release, hospitalizations at UCHealth facilities have spiked to levels as high as the first peak of the pandemic in 2020. 

Across all 12 UCHealth hospitals in Colorado, 257 people were hospitalized with Covid as of Wednesday. 

About 82% of those hospitalized were unvaccinated, according to UCHealth. Of the patients who required ventilators, 87% were unvaccinated. Many patients who were vaccinated but hospitalized had other medical issues, UCHealth said. 

According to a report by the Colorado Sun, Colorado has fewer intensive care hospital beds available now than at any other point in the pandemic. At one point last week, the state had less than 200 available ICU beds. 

Gov. Jared Polis has previously stated that he would reimpose restrictions such as mask mandates if hospitals were overwhelmed. 

At a recent press conference though, Polis said the state isn’t there yet.