DENVER (KDVR) — A group of Colorado emergency department doctors is withdrawing its request for the governor to enact crisis standards of care in hospitals, saying the decrease in COVID cases is allowing the emergency rooms to stabilize.
The Colorado chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians has had a series of meetings with the governor’s office.
The president, Dr. Ramnik Dhaliwal, said doctors continue to see larger than normal volumes in the emergency departments, but there has been some improvement in the number of COVID cases and that seems to be holding for now.
“A week ago, we were seeing large volumes of COVID cases. Of course, we still see those, but I think they have leveled off and decreased,” Dhaliwal said. “The big question and the thing we are going to continue to watch is whether we had a false peak, or whether this was actually our peak and plateau, and decline.”
“That doesn’t mean that we are out of the woods. We continue to provide care in a setting with really significant workforce shortages and volumes that make it a very different type of health care setting,” Dhaliwal continued.
So, what does this say about the battle against COVID right now?
“I think the thing everyone needs to understand, and we all need to just come to grips with, is that COVID is not going to go away,” Dhaliwal said. “The next couple of weeks, I’m hoping, we’ll see a continued decline, and I’m hoping that we don’t see another peak, but that doesn’t mean we’re not going to have another variant in the future.”