Coronavirus: How Full Are Hospitals In Boulder County?

Many hospitals in Colorado and across the country are at risk of reaching capacity due to the ongoing surge of coronavirus cases.

Gov. Jared Polis in November issued an executive order that allows the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment to prevent hospitals that have reached capacity from taking in new patients. The new order aims to help hospitals respond to climbing coronavirus case rates.

Under the order, when a hospital reaches capacity, it's required to notify the state agency, which can then order the hospital to stop taking new patients and transfer them to other area hospitals.

The order requires hospitals to stabilize any patients before they are transferred, officials said.

So how full are hospitals in Boulder County? National Public Radio created a "look-up" tool, which shows that hospitals in the county have reached, on average, 61 percent capacity. Around 21 percent of all Boulder County hospital beds were being used by COVID-19 patients, the data shows.

Here's a look at hospital capacity in the neighboring metro Denver area:

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• Denver: 66 percent; 16 percent of which is COVID-19 patients
• Jefferson County: 67 percent; 33 percent of which is COVID-19 patients
• Arapahoe County: 75 percent; 18 percent of which is COVID-19 patients
• Adams County: 65 percent; 24 percent of which is COVID-19 patients
• Douglas County: 74 percent; 22 percent of which is COVID-19 patients
• Broomfield: 70 percent; 26 percent of which is COVID-19 patients

If case rates grow over the next month in Colorado, many hospitals will also face staff shortages, officials said. And then there's the supply of medical equipment — over the past week, around 50 percent of our state's supply of critical care ventilators have been in use.

Patch Editor William Bornhoft contributed to this report.