Colorado governor says ignoring virus is like playing 'Russian roulette,' as daily cases nearly double in week

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Another 6,439 Coloradans were diagnosed with covid-19 — nearly double Monday’s daily total, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis announced Friday, warning state residents who continue to ignore the virus’s threat that they were playing Russian roulette with their own lives and the lives of others.

“You wouldn’t do it with a gun, and you shouldn’t do it with the virus,” he said, adding that one in 20 individuals who contract the virus will die.

He likened meeting with family members outside of one’s household for the holidays, without first quarantining for two weeks, to holding “a loaded pistol to grandma’s head.”

“That’s where we are,” he said bluntly.

Friday’s diagnosis total was 6,439, up by nearly 2,000 from the prior day’s total of 4,591, and up from 3,602 on Monday. Approximately one in 110 Coloradans currently has the virus, Polis said — and as many as one in 58 in Adams County and one in 64 in Denver.

The state’s emergency operations center has been ordered to return to level one, its highest level of operation, Polis said, adding that the center operated under such a level from March 1 through the end of May.

He’ll soon sign an executive order outlining steps hospitals must take before requesting access to surge facilities, including increasing internal capacity, halting elective procedures and utilizing the state’s inter-hospital transfer system, he said.

Hospitals must submit their facilities’ surge capacities to the state by Wednesday and a surge plan to the state by Nov. 20. They will now be required to update the state at 8 a.m. and 10 p.m. daily as to their capacity, he added.

As of Friday, 1,159 Coloradans were hospitalized for covid-19, Polis said. State officials continue to warn that, according to current projections exceeded by actual data, the state will exceed hospital capacity by next month.

“People will die who could have been saved,” including those who require care for non-covid conditions like heart attacks and strokes, Polis said.

“I continue to hope that we will not use” alternative care sites,” Polis said, “but we are prepared to activate them, if necessary — and we are a lot closer to that today than we were two weeks ago, four weeks ago. We stand by ready for action.

“Our north star is, and continues to be, making sure we have available beds.”

The state has the ability to stand up three surge centers, he said. The first two to open would be at St. Mary-Corwin Medical Center in Pueblo, which could immediately take 25 patients and could expand its capacity to 240 within a month, and St. Anthony North Health Campus in Westminster, which could immediately take 25 patients and expand to 78 within a month. The third center to open would be at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver, which could take 80 patients upon opening and surge up to 200 in a month. None of the beds are ICU-level, Polis said, but all would be open to noncritical patients and have oxygen capabilities. Such surge beds would free regular hospital beds for more severe patients.

“It’s still something our hands — in your hands — if we show the resolve to do so,” Polis said, hinting that the need for such facilities was not necessarily inevitable, if Coloradans were to buckle down with precautionary measures.

The goal has never been to eliminate the virus in Colorado, Polis said, adding “that was simply not a possibility here.”

“It might have been in Taiwan or New Zealand, island nations that can control the flow, who got on it early,” he said. “Our goal has been to manage this and reduce unnecessary loss of life.”

And it’s not a lost cause, he contended, when asked if Coloradans have the collective will to stem the virus’s exponential growth in the state.

“I will never give up on the people of Colorado or our country,” he said.