{"id":65105,"date":"2020-03-30T20:40:16","date_gmt":"2020-03-31T02:40:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/how-many-covid-19-tests-have-been-done-in-la-plata-county-local-health-officials-dont-know\/"},"modified":"2020-03-31T02:40:16","modified_gmt":"2020-03-31T02:40:16","slug":"how-many-covid-19-tests-have-been-done-in-la-plata-county-local-health-officials-dont-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/how-many-covid-19-tests-have-been-done-in-la-plata-county-local-health-officials-dont-know\/","title":{"rendered":"How many COVID-19 tests have been done in La Plata County? Local health officials don\u2019t know"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Durango
Durango Herald file<br><br>Liane Jollon, executive director of San Juan Basin Public Health, says officials don\u2019t know how many tests have been conducted for coronavirus because health care providers are not required to report.<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

One question health officials in La Plata County keep hearing from the public is: How many tests for coronavirus have been conducted in the community? But arriving at the answer isn\u2019t so simple.<\/p>\n

\u201cI totally get why people want that information, they want to wrap their brains around what is going on in our community,\u201d said Liane Jollon, executive director of San Juan Basin Public Health. \u201cBut it\u2019s a really complex issue as to why we don\u2019t know all the tests that leave our community.\u201d<\/p>\n

About a month ago, before the number of cases ramped up across the country, SJBPH was in direct communication with local health care providers, which shared how many tests had been conducted on people.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew at any given time the scope of pending tests,\u201d Jollon said. \u201cBut that feels like it was years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

Health care providers in the community are reporting to SJBPH only when a test comes back positive. They are not required to, and haven\u2019t been, reporting the total number of tests.<\/p>\n

Mercy Regional Medical Center, for instance, said in an email Monday it isn\u2019t releasing the number of coronavirus tests it has completed.<\/p>\n

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment reports there have been 15,364 people tested as of Sunday. A CDPHE spokesman said all testing results need to be reported to the state, but data by county was not available.<\/p>\n

Complicating the matter further for local officials is the fact that more health care centers are obtaining the ability to test, and some send the tests off to private labs.<\/p>\n

Jollon said knowing how many tests have been conducted isn\u2019t crucial to fighting the outbreak, but it would be helpful information to know to relay to the community.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re happy just that more testing is available \u2026 but we\u2019d love that information to answer more of the community\u2019s questions,\u201d Jollon said.<\/p>\n

One other topic on the community\u2019s mind has been why the health department has not released demographics about those who have tested positive. In La Plata County, there have been 23 confirmed cases as of Monday afternoon.<\/p>\n

Jollon said that demographics weren\u2019t initially released because there were only a handful of confirmed cases, and the health department didn\u2019t want to compromise the identity of any patients.<\/p>\n

But now that there are more positive cases, SJBPH plans to release this week the percent of confirmed cases by age group, separated by decade.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t have demographics because it was only a few people,\u201d Jollon said. \u201cNow, we have numbers.\u201d<\/p>\n

jromeo@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Landscape is fragmented when it comes to testing, lab work<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":65106,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[685,28,29,4259,668,686],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-65105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-coronavirus-covid-19","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter","tag-newsletter-sign-up","tag-public-health","tag-san-juan-basin-health-department"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65105"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=65105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}