DENVER (KDVR) — More than half of Colorado’s COVID-19 deaths have occurred at long-term care facilities, prisons and other group living homes.

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment released new information Wednesday that shows there are 174 outbreaks at those facilities and at least 547 deaths that are confirmed or probably caused by the coronavirus.

The largest outbreak at a long-term care facility is at the Cherry Creek Nursing Center, where the state reports the coronavirus is confirmed to have killed 23 residents and probably killed seven more. CDPHE also reports at least 59 residents and 32 staffers have tested positive for COVID-19.

“It’s not surprising that that’s where our mortality has been and will likely continue to be our most challenging environment,” said Dr. Jeff Wallace, the medical director at two nursing homes and a professor of geriatric medicine at the University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine.

“We can mitigate,” Wallace said. “We can decrease the impact… if we do have to deal with it in the future, but you’re not going to eliminate it. It is the nature of the patient population.”

To slow the spread of COVID-19 inside long-term care facilities, Wallace said they need more personal protective equipment (PPE) and they need more testing of both residents and employees. The testing is important because studies show at least 25 percent of people who have the coronavirus are asymptomatic.

Employees who don’t show symptoms unwillingly bring the virus into the facilities, pass it others and may never realize it.

“If the federal government had made more testing available earlier, we could’ve begun testing asymptomatic workers at those facilities earlier and potentially prevented some of those infections,” Gov. Jared Polis said Wednesday.

To date, he said the state has provided nursing homes with more than 500,000 pieces of PPE. The Colorado National Guard is also continuing to test residents and staff at long-term care facilities.