DENVER — Gov. Jared Polis called for the state to find 300 to 500 additional beds for hospitalized patients as new projections suggest the ongoing COVID-19 surge could lead Colorado to exceed its hospital capacity in December.
Current measures meant to keep people out of the hospital and to use every bed are “not going to be enough” as more and more people become severely ill from COVID-19, Polis said Wednesday during a meeting of the Governor’s Expert Emergency Epidemic Response Committee.
New modeling discussed at the meeting showed more than 2,000 people could be hospitalized with the virus across the state by year’s end, surpassing the high point of last fall’s deadly wave.
This comes as Colorado currently is experiencing some of the highest rates of new COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations in the nation.
Polis didn’t outline where additional hospital beds would come from, other than to say state officials would work with existing health care facilities to accommodate more patients rather than build field hospitals, such as the facilities set up in the early months of the pandemic that never were used.