This story by Newsline staff appeared on Colorado Newsline on September 28, 2021.
Schools in Colorado have free access to COVID-19 tests, but only a small fraction of students and staff have taken advantage of the program, and state public health officials are encouraging more members of the school community to sign up for tests.
A little more than 5,200 Colorado K-12 students have provided consent to be tested, and about 4,600 students have been tested this school year, along with about 2,400 staff, according to Dr. Emily Travanty, the scientific director at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s state lab, who spoke during a Tuesday news briefing with Governor Jared Polis. There were more than 883,000 pre-K-12 students in the state according to the last count.
The COVID-19 tests have detected 61 positive cases, Travanty said.
The Colorado Sun reported on Tuesday that not enough students were using the school testing program for it to work, saying the “Polis administration is blaming schools and parents” for its ineffectiveness so far. The school testing program is funded with $173 million from the federal American Rescue Plan Act, according to the Sun.
“The school testing is available free, for private schools, charter schools, public schools,” Polis said during the news briefing. “Please, we want more schools to implement that to have a significant impact on reducing the spread of the virus. So, please, encourage your school to do so.”
An at-home testing program, however, which the state launched earlier this month, is seeing demand exceed capacity. The state health department is distributing free BinaxNOW rapid antigen tests that Coloradans can administer themselves at home. Results are produced in about 15 minutes. The program is targeted at families with children but any Coloradan can participate.
So far more than 70,000 of the tests have been distributed, Travanty said. She asked users of the test to report results to the state.
Many other testing options are available to Coloradans, including at community sites, hospitals and pharmacies. The state offers an online guide of testing options.
Polis said testing efforts in Colorado are part of the reason the state is better off than other parts of the country in terms of its rate of fatalities and infections.
From Sept. 21 through Sept. 27, an average of 1,467 new cases of COVID-19 were reported each day. The state’s fifth wave of cases peaked the week of Sept. 9 through Sept. 15, when the seven-day average was 1,989 daily new cases.
“We seem to continue to be at a plateau to slight decline. Still a high incidence of COVID across the entire country. Colorado continues to have the sixth-lowest rate of COVID in the country but it is still very prevalent here,” Polis said.
He continues to strongly encourage vaccinations, including the Pfizer booster shots that federal authorities signed off on this month. He said on Tuesday that 866 COVID-19 patients were in Colorado hospitals, and, of those, 702 were not vaccinated.
“It is largely at this point a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Polis said. “If everyone was vaccinated there simply wouldn’t be concerns about hospitalizations or anything else.”
Booster shots are recommended for people 65 and older, or in long-term care facilities; anyone between 50 and 64 who has underlying medical conditions; people between 18 and 49 with underlying medical conditions, based on an individual assessment of risk from COVID-19; and anyone 18 through 64 who is in an occupational or institutional setting where risk of COVID-19 transmission is high, such as health care workers.
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