By Jason Dearen and Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, The Associated Press WASHINGTON — Lagging vaccination rates among nursing home staff are being linked to a national increase in COVID-19 infections and deaths at senior facilities, and are at the center of a federal investigation in a hard-hit Colorado location where disease detectives found many workers were not […]
coronavirus outbreaks
Posted inColoradans, COVID, Crime and Courts, Health, News
Coronavirus lockdowns in prisons test limits of Colorado’s rules on solitary confinement
Last summer, Matthew Harter, a 50-year-old from Lakewood, was incarcerated at Centennial Correctional Facility South, a prison in Cañon City, when he started to have trouble breathing. Harter didn’t have COVID-19. He had anxiety, he said, because he was in quarantine, alone in his cell, which was about the size of a parking space, for […]
Posted inCOVID, News
How CU scientists identified coronavirus “super-carriers” by collecting gallons of students’ spit
When the University of Colorado Boulder launched a massive, weekly coronavirus testing program as students returned to campus last fall, it soon encountered a puzzle that shows how much we still have to learn about the virus that has bedeviled us for more than a year. Students were testing positive, and they certainly seemed capable […]
Posted inColoradans, COVID, Crime and Courts, News
Ouray police officers turned down the coronavirus vaccine. Then almost the entire department fell ill.
When Ouray Police Chief Jeff Wood started feeling sick on Monday, Feb. 1, he brushed it off as a sinus infection. The mild fever, muscle aches and minor congestion that he noticed for two days seemed more like a sinus infection than anything to worry about, and by Wednesday, he felt better. He attended a […]
Posted inCOVID, Crime and Courts, News
More than half of Colorado’s prison population has likely been infected with coronavirus, report says
Likely more than half of the people held in Colorado prisons have been infected with the coronavirus, one of several astonishing numbers included in a report released Thursday that calls for incarcerated and detained individuals to be prioritized for the COVID-19 vaccine. The report comes from the Colorado Health Institute — a nonpartisan health policy […]
Posted inBusiness, COVID, News, Newsletters, Outdoors, Outsider
Climbing coronavirus cases in Colorado’s high country aren’t tracking back to ski resorts
Colorado’s resort communities are teetering on the edge of increased restrictions as a potential surge in COVID-19 cases from the busy holidays looms. But public health officials in eight tourism-dependent communities have not linked any outbreaks to ski areas. “It’s not the activity of skiing that is the risk but all the things that go […]
Posted inCOVID, Crime and Courts, Health, News
“Of course it feels unsafe”: Colorado prisons face staffing crisis as scores of guards, inmates catch coronavirus
By Allison Sherry, CPR News Throughout the month of December, Gov. Jared Polis has considered asking the National Guard to help with basic operations inside the state’s prisons — laundry, meal preparation, trash removal — because massive COVID-19 outbreaks among correctional officers and inmates have sparked a staffing crisis. Last week, there were almost 400 […]
Posted inCOVID, Health, News
Who should go next for the coronavirus vaccine? A possible answer has been in Boulder all along.
For weeks now, health and community leaders in Colorado have engaged in a sometimes tense debate over how best to allocate scarce supplies of the coronavirus vaccine in order to save the most lives. One argument goes that the state should prioritize those most at risk of death — people who are older and people […]
Posted inCOVID, Education, Health, News
Colorado school outbreaks nearly doubled in November as coronavirus cases surged
COVID outbreaks at Colorado K-12 schools nearly doubled in November, reflecting the challenge of keeping the virus at bay in classrooms when cases are surging in the community. Colorado also saw an increase in school-based outbreaks that affected 10 or more people, logging 17 such cases in November, including one with 48 positive cases at […]
Posted inCOVID, Health, News
Colorado’s final coronavirus vaccine preparations include practicing for high-stakes delivery road trips
At 8:06 a.m. on Tuesday, a plain cardboard box about the size of a large suitcase was placed on a dolly and wheeled out of a building near the busy runways at Denver International Airport. The precious cargo inside represented — hopefully — the beginning of the end of the coronavirus pandemic: vials of a […]