When Dr. Connie Price, chief medical officer of Denver Health, traveled to Toronto in 2003 to help combat the SARS outbreak, she thought she’d never see anything like it again.

“I walked off the plane in the middle of this outbreak,” she told Colorado Politics over the phone the morning of April 3. “Nothing was open. Restaurants were closed. People had been forced to leave their jobs. It was very similar to what we’re seeing in Denver and across the country.”

But one thing’s quite different about the coronavirus outbreak, she said: “It feels like 10 times the scale.”

Since the beginning of March, work has been “nonstop,” Price said. She’s clocking in 12-hour days, spending most of her time on the phone “day after day” with state officials, personal protective equipment suppliers and laboratory staff, to name a few.

“It’s just this constant trying to keep up with all of those pieces to make sure our response is successful,” she said.

Denver Health has seen an influx of COVID-19 patients over the last few weeks, but Price notes the volume of patients is slower in uptick than some of the initial projections showed.

In about two weeks, she said, conclusions can begin to be made about how effective social distancing guidelines have been.

Public health officials estimate that Colorado’s social distancing efforts have reduced the spread of the coronavirus from cases doubling every two days to every five. Gov. Jared Polis on April 9 said that the state is just days away from early results.

Price also said that, as of the week of March 23, Denver Health has started to see an increase in stock of key supplies, including N-95 respirators.

“That’s been really reassuring,” she said.

Denver Mayor Michael Hancock said on April 8 that President Donald Trump has “failed our nation” by leaving cities and state to fend for themselves when it comes to equipment needed to respond to the COVID-19 emergency.

Hancock was one of 114 mayors who called on the Trump administration to increase production and delivery of medical supplies immediately.

As of April 4, the city had requested nearly 323,000 masks, but received less than 19,000. Of the 1.1 million surgical masks Denver asked for, only 25,000 were delivered. The city also requested 60,000 gowns but netted only about 10,300.  

Polis also has been largely critical of the federal government for its delayed response to the pandemic and its deployment of resources to the state.

Denver Health has recently started “reprocessing” its respirators, meaning they’re collected at the end of every day and wrapped in sterilization pouches before being put through a low-temperature sterilizer that uses hydrogen peroxide gas. Once they’re cleaned, the respirators are inspected to make sure they’re intact before they’re redistributed again to front-line workers.

On April 2, Price said Denver Health had 30 coronavirus patients, but that by April 3, patients had increased to 43, marking the largest increase the hospital had seen to date.

“If you drew a trend line going back to March 25, we’re seeing a steady increase,” she said, “but it’s not an off-the-charts influx like places, such as Italy, have experienced. It’s gradual, but not exponential.”  

As far as testing goes, Price said that Denver Health has had the capability to conduct about 550 tests a day, which is not yet full capacity because the hospital is short on testing kits. For that reason, tests have been limited to those who would benefit most from them, she said, including hospital patients and health care workers.

However, in the coming weeks more tests will be made available to the greater community, she said, although still not to everyone.

“In my mind,” she said, “the important folks to focus on will be anybody in an institutional setting,” including residents of long-term care facilities, correctional care inmates, hospitalized patients, dialysis populations and other particularly vulnerable populations.

With more testing capabilities, Price said, the state has a real shot of slowing transmission.

Nevertheless, the state is working with hospitals to develop a plan should a surge of patients overwhelm the health care system.

Colorado’s health officials are asking hospitals to submit data on PPE supply, staffing needs and more to gather data on what’s needed to accommodate a potential surge.

“Denver Health has done a lot of work setting up infrastructure to be able to turn on a dime,” Price said. For example, it’s converted its general ward to an intensive care unit because the ICU “isn’t big enough at baseline,” and the hospital has also expanded its existing bed supply to accommodate COVID-19 patients.

According to new data released by the Harvard Global Health Institute, in a “moderate scenario” wherein 40% of Denver’s adult population contracted the disease, hospitals across the city, including Denver Health, could see an estimated 195,000 coronavirus patients over a one-year period. 

The influx of patients would require nearly three times the number of available beds in that time period, the report found.

Price called the findings a “big reality check” and said Denver Health as a result is now planning to need to accommodate about three times more ICU patients than it normally would.

Reflecting on her experiences during the current coronavirus outbreak and the severe acute respiratory syndrome that was first identified in Asia in 2003, Price said one major difference stands out: the availability of supplies.

“There weren’t any PPE shortages or testing shortages or anything like that,” she said. “Gosh, when I think about it, if we just had all of our supplies, in some ways, it’d be so much easier.”