Colorado Politics

Colorado potentially willing to take Arizona coronavirus patients, Polis says

Colorado could take coronavirus patients from overtaxed Arizona hospitals where the pandemic is raging, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis’ office said in a Wednesday statement to The Gazette.

Arizona health officials said that state’s daily case count spiked by more than 3,600 patients Wednesday, with 109,000 sickened there during the pandemic. More than 90 percent of Arizona’s available intensive care unit hospital beds were in use Wednesday.

“If another state needed Colorado’s help, then we would evaluate the current landscape and see how Colorado could help save the lives of our fellow Americans,” the governor’s office said in an email.

Tucson Mayor Regina Romero told CNN on Tuesday that Arizona healthcare workers are just “days” away from moving patients out of Arizona because of a shortage of intensive-care beds.

Romero accused President Trump of charting an inefficient path to slowing the spread of the coronavirus.

“What’s happening in Arizona is a microcosm of … the direction that President Trump has led us in,” she said. “There is no coordinated effort for testing in this country, much less here in Arizona. We need help. We’re in crisis.”

Trump on Wednesday took to Twitter to say that dire accounts of the pandemic are overblown.

“We have the lowest Mortality Rate in the World,” Trump said. “The Fake News should be reporting these most important of facts, but they don’t!”

Romero also attacked Ducey for failing to mandate a mask policy for the state.

At least 35 states – including Arizona, California, Georgia and Texas – are seeing a daily increase of new cases this week, with many of them also dealing with a rise in hospitalizations and a shortage of testing supplies.

 The Washington Examiner and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Gov. Jared Polis wears a mask as he leaves a news conference about the state’s efforts to stop the spread of the coronavirus June 24, 2020, in Denver.
The Associated Press
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