A Department of Defense medical team is set to bolster the ranks of UCHealth’s hospital in Fort Collins, the health system said Thursday, the latest team of federal reinforcements to arrive in Colorado.

Roughly 20 staff members – nurses, respiratory therapists, administrators and other providers – will be deployed at UCHealth’s Poudre Valley Hospital for about a month, the system said in a news release.

A spokesman for the state Department of Public Health and Environment said the team will arrive next week. The team is the result of a state request to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has already provided at least one other team – to a Pueblo hospital.

“Last week, (Gov. Jared Polis) shared that the state had requested several medical surge teams. … The state requested this assistance to supplement its response and increase support for hospitals and monoclonal antibody treatment,” the agency spokesman said.

The team will “ease capacity and staffing challenges,” the system said, which have plagued hospitals statewide and driven a crisis, significantly worsened by COVID-19, that now threatens to overwhelm the state’s health system.

“We are so grateful that this team will assist us in providing exceptional care in northern Colorado,” Kevin Unger, the president and chief executive officer at the Poudre Valley facility and the system’s Medical Center of the Rockies, said in a statement. “We anticipate this additional support and other plans we already have in the works will help make a significant difference.”

Systemwide, UCHealth has 373 COVID-19 patients, its highest mark since mid-December of last year. One hundred and forty-one of those patients are in intensive care units, and 113 are on ventilators, according to data released by the hospital Thursday. Of UCHealth’s total COVID-19 patients, 81% are unvaccinated. Eighty-seven percent of intensive care patients and 89% of those on ventilators have also not been inoculated.

Roughly 100 of UCHealth’s patients are in northern Colorado, the system said, including the Poudre Valley facility. With the Defense Department reinforcements, more staff will now “be able to support operations at Medical Center of the Rockies in Loveland and Greeley Hospital.”

As of Thursday afternoon, there were fewer than 600 hospital beds – both intensive care and acute care – left in Colorado. Though those numbers can fluctuate on a daily or even hourly basis, available bed space has steadily grown tighter in recent weeks. State officials have said the state is facing its worst capacity crisis of the pandemic.

To address it, Polis has taken a number of steps, including calling for 500 additional hospital beds to be opened by mid-December. Hospitals have said they have the infrastructure to meet the state’s needs, but staffing remains a challenge; 39% of Colorado’s facilities reported Thursday that they’re projecting a staffing shortage in the next week, according to state data.

Polis and his team have said they’ve requested FEMA teams and are tapping out-of-state providers to help swell hospitals’ ranks, which have been depleted by burnout over the course of the pandemic. 

Though some have laid the blame for the staffing crisis on vaccine mandates, the requirement had a minimal effect on UCHealth: Of the system’s more than 26,000 employees, just over 100 were terminated because they wouldn’t comply with UCHealth’s requirements. That group includes workers across the board, not just clinical staff.