28.03.2024

High County Communites Band Together To Strengthen Coronavirus Testing

Garfield, Pitkin and Eagle Counties teamed up to develop a unified coronavirus testing strategy. The goal is to shorten the turnaround time for test results.

This will make contact tracing easier and more efficient.

“What’s really concerning is that people who don’t know that they’re positive, they’re like ‘I don’t know if i’m positive, I might go to work. I might go here and there,’ and they come back positive. They have the potential to spread the illness much further,” said Kerrie Godes, a spokeswoman at Garfield County Public Health.

All three counties stressed keeping numbers low is a community effort.

Polis Hopeful About COVID-19 Vaccine, Jokes About Burning Masks In ‘Huge Bonfire’

Gov. Jared Polis said Tuesday that he’s “very confident” there will be a cure or a vaccine for the coronavirus, and joked that we’ll all celebrate by hugging and burning our masks.

“We are hopeful that there will be a vaccine or cure and we can all embrace one another and return to our lives and take off all of our masks and burn them in a huge bonfire,” Gov. Polis said.

“We will get through this as a state, as a nation, as a world,” he said. “I remain very confident there will be a vaccine, or cure.”

In the mean time, Polis said he’s trying everything he can think of to encourage people to wear masks and practice social distancing.

“Now is not the time to panic, it’s not the time to feel anxious, it’s the time to redouble our justified caution.”

Polis said nearly 60% of Colorado has some kind of face mask mandate.

Thursday night was a big night for Selene and Jefferson Arca. The couple owns The Clocktower Cabaret in downtown Denver and have been closed for months because of coronavirus. But on Thursday, it was their grand reopening.

“We tried to open in June and we did everything. But we had to pull all the shows down. So this is kind of our second big attempt,” Jefferson told CBS’s Dominic Garcia.

Patrons are going to notice some changes. Capacity has been drastically cut and two thirds of the tables are gone. Employees, guests, even performers must wear masks. And people can only be served food and drink at their tables, not at the bar.

“We kind of are operating like a restaurant would. People come in and stay at their table, there’s no real mingling, they don’t walk around. So it’s like a dinner theater,” said Jefferson.

It’s been a hard few months for Selene and Jefferson, and even though they’re not at full capacity, they’re just happy to be back open.

“We’re just making the best of what the rules are and hoping that as people show up they understand.”

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