Berthoud Weekly Surveyor | Covering all the angles in the Garden Spot

News Bites – February 24, 2022

By: Amber McIver-Traywick | The Surveyor | February 25, 2022 | Local News

*Total COVID-19 Cases: 75,000 (+881)

Total Cases in Berthoud: 3,355 (+44)

Deaths in Larimer County: 466 (+1)

7-day case rate per 100k: 158 (-122)

Hospital Utilization: 70%

ICU Utilization: 78%

7-Day test positivity rate: 5.9%

Risk Score: High

COVID patients in hospital: 32 (-7)

Deaths attributed to the virus comprise 0.62% of reported cases. Of reported deaths, 25% were age 75 to 84, 20% were 65-74 and 38% were 85 and older. Thirty-two people in the county between the ages of 18-54 have died.

As of Monday, Feb. 21, there have been 618,894 doses of the vaccines administered in Larimer County. 79.7% of eligible county residents have received at least one dose of the vaccine.

*Case data as of Wednesday.

The Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment reports 602.3 breakthrough cases in vaccinated people who have received a third dose (booster) per 100,000 as of January 30 and 1,370 cases per 100,000 unvaccinated people. Deaths attributed to the COVID-19 virus make up .94% of the total 1,295,177 cases of the virus reported to the state.

 

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The state of Colorado expanded the free Rapid At-Home testing program and will now include a community distribution at different locations around the state for rapid COVID-19 tests. The program will leverage many of the 437 community partners that have helped the state distribute more than 4.1 million masks and includes hundreds of libraries, fire stations, and other community sites across the state. A listing of these locations can be found at covid19.colorado.gov/testing. This added distribution supplements the existing program which allows Coloradans to sign up for free test kits to be shipped directly to them.

“Testing is an important tool for slowing disease transmission and we are grateful to our community partners who are helping us increase access to free rapid COVID-19 tests,” said Scott Bookman, COVID-19 Incident Commander. “By utilizing community partners to distribute tests like they did with the free mask program, we are able to add to the 2 million free Rapid-At-Home tests we have already distributed to Coloradans and further increase access to rapid testing.”

The tests being distributed as part of this newest program are iHealth Labs over-the-counter COVID-19 Antigen rapid tests. They take 15 minutes to provide a result and instructions are included on the box in English and available online in Spanish.

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The Board of Larimer County Commissioners approved an Immediate Needs Grant of $50,000 to assist Heart and Soul Paratransit with providing paratransit to community members in need of transportation services.

The Immediate Needs Grant money is part of American Recovery Plan Act [ARPA] funding. The board voted 2-0 to approve the funding at their regular Administrative Matters meeting on February 15. Commissioner Shadduck-McNally was absent.

Heart and Soul Paratransit provides transportation to seniors, those with disabilities, and others in our community with barriers to reliable transportation. “I know they provide really good and important services, and they typically serve a lot of non-emergency care, in other words — people who need to visit their doctor, and in particular bring a lot of dialysis patients to their appointments. And those folks are at much higher risk,” said Larimer County Commissioner John Kefalas.

The COVID pandemic affected the company’s services, resulting in 4,500 fewer rides and a loss of about $132,000 of revenue between 2019 and 2021. In addition to maintaining their paratransit fleet, the company also provided almost $10,000 in materials to equip their fleet to lessen the spread of COVID-19 while providing services.

Heart and Soul Paratransit provides service to Berthoud residents east of County Line Road.

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The Weld County Board of Commissioners joined 37 other counties from across Colorado in voicing their opposition to any legislation mandating collective bargaining for public employees. Rumblings of proposed legislation seeking this change have caused elected officials and various agencies across the state to sound the alarm with the General Assembly.

More than 100 county commissioners, including four of the five Weld County Commissioners, signed a formal letter addressed to state legislators urging all members of the General Assembly to “oppose any efforts to advance such legislation” citing that “a top-down, mandated approach would impose a significant unfunded mandate on the undersigned stakeholders, and contradict Colorado’s long history of local control.” No commissioners in Larimer County signed the letter.

“Any such proposed legislation will cause irreparable harm to Colorado taxpayers,” said Weld County Chair Scott James, who worked closely with commissioners across the state on the drafting of the opposition letter. “Such a shift in policy is short-sighted and unwarranted. It is a solution no one asked for to a problem that doesn’t exist.”

The Colorado county commissioners join the Colorado Association of School Boards, the Colorado Association of School Executives, the Colorado Municipal League, the Special District Association and others in expressing opposition to any such proposed legislation.

The letter was addressed to Speaker Garnett, President Fenberg, Majority Leaders Esgar and Moreno as well as Minority Leaders McKean and Holbert.

The letter does state “the undersigned do NOT oppose collective bargaining as a policy – we believe this is an individual employer/employee decision,” before going on to stress that unfunded mandates and unwelcome insertion into local governments, schools and higher education institutions and their budgetary matters by the state is harmful to Colorado on many levels.

 

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FEMA has approved another $7.7 million in Public Assistance funding for the COVID-19 response in Colorado. The assistance was made available under a major disaster declaration issued March 28, 2020. FEMA has provided more than $1.58 billion in Public Assistance grant funds for Colorado’s COVID-19 response to date.

The Colorado Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management was awarded the $7.7 million in FEMA funding for the cost of managing and administering direct and indirect Public Assistance grant funds during the pandemic.

For the COVID-19 response, FEMA has simplified the Public Assistance application and funding process to address the magnitude of this event and to allow state and local governments to receive eligible funding more quickly.

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