The CU model<\/div>\n
Gov. Jared Polis and other state officials have been relying on a model built by researchers at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. It\u2019s also sort of a middle-ground model in this set.<\/p>\n
The model predicts that there are currently 17,000 to 18,000 cases of COVID-19 in Colorado and that the state will be able to avoid overwhelming the hospital system only if Coloradans do a really good job of staying home.<\/p>\n
\u201cHigh levels of social distancing, sustained throughout April, can not only flatten the curve but bend the curve such that we will see a decline in cases and hospitalizations such that hospital capacity is not exceeded,\u201d the CU team wrote in a memo released Monday.<\/p>\n
In the model, bending the curve means reducing in-person social interactions by 70% or more from normal. If the state achieves only a 60% reduction in social interactions, the critical-care capacity of Colorado hospitals would become overwhelmed by mid-May.<\/p>\n
How well the state complies with the stay-at-home order will also determine when the peak arrives. If there\u2019s poor compliance, the peak would likely hit sooner, at a time when there aren\u2019t enough hospital beds and ventilators to treat everyone. If there\u2019s good compliance, though, the peak may not arrive until late-summer, when the state hopes to have thousands of more beds and ventilators to treat patients.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is why social distancing is so important,\u201d Dr. Rachel Herlihy, the state epidemiologist, said in a call with reporters on Monday. \u201c\u2026 We are social distancing to save lives. If we don\u2019t take this seriously, we will continue to see an increase in cases and a tragic loss of lives.\u201d<\/p>\n
The CU team updated its model Sunday to take into account new data on the impact of the statewide order closing bars and restaurants \u2013 which Herlihy said showed that the rate of increase in new cases has slowed. But data on the impact of the full stay-at-home order won\u2019t be available until later this week at the earliest. So Herlihy said there\u2019s still uncertainty in the projection.<\/p>\n
Dr. Jonathan Samet, the dean of the Colorado School of Public Health, which is helping produce the model, said researchers were recently able to refine their projections by adding data about Colorado\u2019s age distribution. And they are also receiving patient-level information from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment to better understand how COVID-19 has spread across Colorado.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis has been a very rapid two weeks of modeling efforts,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
While state officials believe the CU model is the most thorough, it also has plenty of unknowns.<\/p>\n
Samet said researchers are still trying to understand how infectious the coronavirus is, the differences in how it spreads in rural areas versus urban settings, and what it might look like when the state begins to lift social distancing orders.<\/p>\n
This is a big unknown for all the models out there. A paper by researchers at Imperial College in London argued that the United States and other countries will likely see a second surge in patients in the late fall and winter \u2013 meaning governments will probably have to toggle between relaxing and increasing restrictions for months, with cases yo-yoing up and down as a result.<\/p>\n
Right now, the CU team hasn\u2019t fully projected what it would look like if Colorado lifts the current restrictions. Herlihy said the state is still trying to get a handle on the health impacts of the stay-at-home order before figuring out what turning it off would do.<\/p>\n
But Kathryn Colborn, one of the CU researchers working on the model, said the team has some hints. In order for the state\u2019s epidemic to peak, the number of people that every infected person passes the virus onto \u2013 a figure known in epidemiology as R0 \u2013 has to drop below 1. Otherwise, she said, the epidemic will continue to expand.<\/p>\n
In running scenarios, Colborn said the CU team has found that social distancing has to stay high \u2013 in the 60% to 70% range \u2013 for R0 to go below 1. That means, if the state even just relaxes its social distancing rules, cases will likely climb back up.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn a nutshell, we anticipate a secondary spike around June\u201d if the state eases social distancing rules later this spring, Colborn wrote in an email.<\/p>\n
The Washington model<\/div>\n
Perhaps the most widely cited coronavirus model out there is one produced by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.<\/p>\n
This is the model Trump and federal officials most often cite in their press briefings. And it\u2019s the one that caused Dr. Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, to include Colorado in a list of emerging hotspots.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are watching them because they are starting to go on the upside of the curve,\u201d Birx said of Colorado and other states like Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
But then the IHME model updated on Sunday, and it now shows Colorado already past its peak \u2013 and likely to be well under the state\u2019s hospital capacity.<\/p>\n
In a blog post, IHME researchers acknowledged that Colorado\u2019s projections have seen \u201cfairly substantial changes\u201d caused by increasing availability of data about deaths in the state and a better understanding about the course of outbreaks across the globe. The model originally looked to China to understand how COVID-19 cases rise and fall, but the latest version also takes into account the experiences of Italy and Spain.<\/p>\n
But researchers in Colorado say the IHME model has incomplete data from the state and, therefore, isn\u2019t as reliable as CU\u2019s model.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have not hit the peak,\u201d Herlihy said bluntly.<\/p>\n
Herlihy said IHME doesn\u2019t have access to the patient-specific data that CDPHE is providing to the CU modeling team. It also doesn\u2019t have precise data on the impact of Colorado\u2019s stay-at-home order.<\/p>\n
The IHME model assumes that social-distancing orders will remain in place until June 1. But it also doesn\u2019t predict what happens when those are lifted.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe question of whether there will be a second wave of the epidemic will depend on what we do to avoid reintroducing COVID-19 into the population,\u201d the IHME team wrote on its website. \u201cBy the end of the first wave of the epidemic, an estimated 97% of the population of the United States will still be susceptible to the disease and thus measures to avoid a second wave of the pandemic prior to vaccine availability will be necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n
The worst-case scenario<\/div>\n
There\u2019s a third model that hasn\u2019t received as much attention as the first two. It\u2019s from a group of data scientists from around the country who organized under the name Covid Act Now.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe built covidactnow.org to solve an urgent problem: If we try to fight COVID in the present we will lose,\u201d the team wrote on its website. \u201cWe can only beat COVID by understanding what it will do in the future. Our leaders need a forecasting tool to better understand the future spread of COVID.\u201d<\/p>\n
It makes sense, then, that this model presents the bleakest picture for Colorado. Part of its purpose is to hammer home how serious this virus is.<\/p>\n
If Colorado had taken no action, the model projects that the state would have seen 61,000 deaths from COVID-19, nearly twice the number the CU model projected. Even with social distancing measures in place, if compliance with those measures is poor, the model expects Colorado to exceed hospital capacity by early May and then surge up to nearly 32,000 hospitalizations by mid-June.<\/p>\n
Asked about this model, CU\u2019s Colborn said it\u2019s a legitimate model built by a strong team of scientists. So, while the Covid Act Now model hopefully doesn\u2019t show what will happen in the state, she said it\u2019s still worth considering. This is how you build a deeper understanding of the disease and what\u2019s coming.<\/p>\n
\u201cMultiple models and different approaches are fine with me,\u201d Colborn wrote on Twitter. \u201cThey show just how uncertain we should be in any one prediction. I do not believe in one model to rule them all!\u201d<\/p>\n
The Colorado Sun is a reader-supported, journalist-owned news outlet exploring issues of statewide interest. Sign up for a newsletter at coloradosun.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Projections from CU medical center say the worst of the coronavirus is to come. A Washington model says Colorado has already hit its peak.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":89430,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[233,685,28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-89427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-coloradosun-com","tag-coronavirus-covid-19","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89427","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=89427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89427"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=89427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}