 All right good morning everyone and thank you for coming here today. My name is Michelle Hewitt and I am leading the public information efforts for Opasso County Public Health. Today we are joined by elected and appointed community leaders as well as local leaders from our public health community. Today's message to the public will address how local agencies have been managing and monitoring the potential for COVID-19 in our community as well as steps residents can take to prevent and prepare if this disease begins circulating in our community. Our speakers today are Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers, Chair of the Opasso County Board of Commissioners Mark Waller, Pikes Peak Regional Office of Emergency Management Director Jim Reed, Opasso County Public Health Director and Incident Commander Deanne Ryberg, Opasso County Public Health Medical Director Dr. Robin Johnson, and Opasso County Public Health Regional Epidemiologist Marenny Claiborne. Also in attendance today but without a speaking role are members of our Colorado Springs City Council, Council Member David Geislinger, and Council Member Wayne Williams. We also have representation from our Opasso County Board of Commissioners Commissioner Holly Williams and Commissioner Lojino Gonzalez. We also have some truly wonderful representatives from our health care partners including UC Health Children's Hospital and Penrose St. Francis. With that being said I'd like to invite Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers for his statement. Good morning. As Mayor of Colorado Springs I want to assure all our citizens that the City of Colorado Springs and El Paso County have been planning for this type of health emergency for many years and we're prepared to respond. Epidemiology, the branch of medicine that deals with prevention and treatment of infectious diseases, is a core function of public health. We're currently monitoring the situation very carefully and are currently in our continuous coordination through our Pike Speak Regional Office of Emergency Management with the El Paso County Public Health Department and the State of Colorado as well as our first responders and local health care agencies. This is a coordinated effort with the State, City, County and local entities working together but this is of course also a community issue. Like with any type of public health issue everyone plays an important role in protecting yourselves and your families. Please be attentive to credible sources of information in this case our public health department to learn what you need to do. As I think you'll hear today simply washing your hands frequently and staying home when sick is the best defense and the spread of any illness including coronavirus. There's a lot of publicity about coronavirus right now but the risk of contracting the virus remains low. There is no reason to panic but we know but please know we are taking it seriously. I encourage our community to take precautions but also feel safe to go about your daily lives. Well this is a new virus as I indicated our community has been preparing for this type of health issue for many years. The Pike Speak Regional Office of Emergency Management, El Paso County Public Health, our major health care systems and many local agencies and first responders regularly coordinate and practice for this type of situation. The City of Colorado Springs and El Paso County also have years of experience cooperating during emergencies. Last year as we know as you know we combined the City and County offices of emergency management and brought together years of knowledge and leadership under the single Pike Speak Regional Office of Emergency Management. I'm extremely confident in our Director Jim Reed and the talent and resources we have to support public health in this response. I also have the utmost confidence in our public health and health care systems and I'd like to recognize a few of our health care representatives here today. First of all Dr. David Steinbruner, Chief Medical Officer UC Health Memorial Hospital. Dr. Bill Plowth, Chief Medical Officer, Penrose St. Francis Health Systems and Greg Raymond, Chief Operating Officer, Children's Hospital Colorado. Thank you all for being here. Folks our hospitals our doctor's offices our urgent care facilities are the first line of response and I know they're poised and ready. We have some of the very best health care systems in the country right here in Colorado Springs and El Paso County. So thank you to everyone who is working together to ensure the public health and safety of our community and with that it's my pleasure to introduce the Chairman of the El Paso County Commissioners Mr. Mark Waller. Thank you Mayor Souther and thank you all for being here today especially members of the media to help us get out these very important words to the citizens of El Paso County. But let me just start here. Our community is in good hands. We are taking a collaborative approach between the City of Colorado Springs and El Paso County to minimize the impacts of this virus. El Paso County Public Health Department is leading the response for us moving forward and for all that we've done up to now and their highly qualified staff is working around the clock to make sure that we are all safe and as well informed and prepared as possible moving forward. Public Health has actually been monitoring the COVID-19 virus since December of last year. They activated an emergency response team as of February 14th of this year. This talented and highly skilled team has been tracking the disease as it spreads through the United States. They've been coordinating with hospitals and working hand in hand with state and federal health agencies to achieve a common operational approach to handling this moving forward. And to be clear we are not waiting for COVID-19 to get here in El Paso County before we get started in the preparation process. And even though we have yet to see a confirmed case of COVID-19 here in El Paso County our staff and our public health department continues with a proactive approach to ensure the safety of our citizens. Even with all the public health has done and continues to do to limit the spread of COVID-19 we have to remember that each and every one of us are our own best defense against this disease. We have to take the responsibility for keeping ourselves and those around us healthy. And that starts with as the mayor said prevention. We have some medical experts here that are going to walk you through exactly what you can do to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and to promote credible sources of information and to protect yourself and those that are around you. Again we are in great hands with our local medical experts both throughout the community and at the El Paso County Public Health Department. Public Health has a team of highly qualified epidemiologists working to minimize the impacts of this disease in our community. In fact our public health directors got 24 years of experience as an emergency physician. Public Health is in close collaboration with the CDC and the state health department and they are receiving constant communication and guidance from those agencies in an effort to keep us all safe. Again we've got great people working on this and I'm going to let you hear from them shortly but let me finish on this note. We're working hard to be prepared to take care of the needs of our community and if we do this correctly and we all do our part we're going to be just fine moving forward. I'm going to turn it over to Jim Reed our OEM director. Thank you Commissioner Waller. Good morning I'm Jim Reed. I'm the director of the Pikes Peak Regional Office of Emergency Management. In 2018 the city of Colorado Springs and El Paso County government came together to form a regional office of emergency management and while no one could have predicted COVID-19 these sorts of situations are why this regional approach was formed. Think about it floods fires or diseases they don't respect political or jurisdictional lines. The Pikes Peak Regional Office of Emergency Management is actively supporting El Paso County Public Health the lead agency managing the response to the coronavirus in El Paso County. We're coordinating closely with El Paso County Public Health and other local partners hospitals and state agencies to prevent the spread of this disease promote credible sources of information and protect the public. Our office has established a planning team to work with public health in anticipation of potential scenarios in our community. The planning team is coordinating our communications team to address public information and preparedness actions. Our virtual Emergency Coordination Center has been activated to support this team. This sort of thing is something that we prepare for full-time. That's true whether it's conducting response drills or coordinating continuity of operations plans to ensure our services continue. We're all working hard to protect and prepare our community. Now it's my great pleasure to introduce the incident commander deputy public health director Deanne Ryberg. Thank you. Good morning. I'm Deanne Ryberg deputy director at El Paso County Public Health. I would like to start by thanking our elected officials county city and community partners for their support. Preparing for something like this requires a community response and we appreciate the dedicated efforts and expertise from partners throughout El Paso County. I would also like to thank the talented epidemiologists and public health staff at El Paso County Public Health who have been working diligently to monitor and prepare for this situation since the first reports of novel coronavirus now known as COVID-19 were received. I would like to reiterate Commissioner Waller's message that although there are currently no identified cases of COVID-19 in El Paso County we are not waiting to prepare and plan to protect our community. As the lead agency in this response public health is taking proactive steps to protect the health of our community by making recommendations that are meant to slow the spread of COVID-19 in our community and reduce the number of people infected. Although we are currently faced with responding to a new virus our approach is certainly not new. Public health routinely plans practices and prepares for situations just like this. Our Board of Health has proactively set aside reserve funds for situations such as this so that we can be poised to increase our capacity and respond to this situation. We are confident in our agency and our partners ability to respond we are utilizing our public health emergency operations plan which contains tools and processes to assess potential exposures identify ill individuals and implement appropriate measures to mitigate the spread of disease to effectively respond to complex needs of this rapidly evolving situation public health has activated our incident command structure this allows us to be more nimble and more efficient in our coordination of logistics resources and public information and planning efforts. We are in constant communication with our partners at the federal level at CDC the state health department Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and other local public health agencies to gain knowledge of the current situation anticipate potential impacts to our community and coordinate efforts related to in multi-sector response this allows us to have a much more comprehensive and effective approach as a community we are united around a shared goal to keep our citizens healthy we are confident in the fact that we have established a robust response framework with partners who stand ready to address any challenge we may encounter and I would like to invite our medical director Dr. Robin Johnson to join us to share more information about the health considerations of COVID-19. Good morning I'm Dr. Robin Johnson medical director of El Paso County Public Health and what I'd like to start with which is probably you already know is what is the novel coronavirus and why have we changed the name as we go along so coronavirus is actually a family of viruses and there's different members when we speak of it being novel it means it's new it's the first time that we've seen it in the human population and it's called novel coronavirus 2019 because that's the year that we first identified it in that population and because it's fairly cumbersome to continually say novel coronavirus 2019 it has been shortened to COVID-19 and that is how we have come to that name and that's how we're referring to it just so you understand that there's no difference between what we're speaking on what we'd like to talk about is how is COVID-19 spread and we know that it is spread through droplets that is the spray that is produced when we cough or sneeze so when we talk about avoiding our close contacts that's usually about the distance that a sneeze or cough would spread those droplets and it's about six feet so the best way to prevent that spread is really practice practicing good respiratory hygiene and etiquette so we really recommend if you do have a cough or a sneeze that you cough into your elbow or your sleeve that if you are out and about that you wash your hands frequently and that you also avoid touching your nose your mouth or your eyes as this is where you would pick up and allow the virus to enter if you are ill we are asking that you stay home because the best way we can prevent this is by you distancing yourself from other people who are healthy and the other piece that we would look at is to remember that we're in the middle of respiratory season and so there's a lot of viruses that are actually in the community right now and already circulating these are the same precautions you would use for those and in addition we know that influenza is still in our community and we would really emphasize and encourage you to go ahead and get your flu vaccine if you have not gotten it yet. The second aspect of approaching this healthcare is not only prevention but promotion and we really are asking that you know your sources of information and that they are reliable and fact-based we really want to be promoting facts and not fear. The third piece as we move forward with addressing this virus from a health care perspective is the protection and we protect not only ourselves but those in our community that we care about whether there are family members our neighbors our friends family members and neighbors grandparents is that we prepare so being prepared to stay home if you have symptoms is really important and we know that about 80 percent of people with coronavirus have mild symptoms so you may be home feeling fairly good so think about what you would need for the two weeks that you might be staying home and what would it look like you might need you know your comfort food which could be ginger ale tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich but also making sure that you have your medications that you would need at that time and preparing just those simple steps without having to prepare for the next six months so when we go out to buy supplies be be diligent but reasonable and we all have a role to play I think it's really important that we come together as a community and realize that when we do have an illness we're going to reach out to our physicians and call first talking through what those symptoms look like really deciding together if we can stay home with symptomatic care when they may need to see you or may need to test you and then being sure that if we're advised to take certain medicines that we do follow our physicians advice and when we're advised to stay home that we do so because we are also those who will be protecting again our family and neighbors so with that I'd like to turn this over to maryne clay I'm sorry maryne claver she is our regional epidemiologist thank you good morning as an epidemiologist much of my work focuses on studying diseases how they spread and educating people on what they can do to prevent themselves and others from getting sick when thinking about coronavirus or COVID-19 we want to make sure that people understand what the symptoms are and when to contact a doctor if someone has a fever dry cough or shortness of breath we recommend that they call a medical provider it's important to remember almost everyone with COVID-19 has a fever which would be over 100 degrees Fahrenheit be sure to call ahead before you show up at a doctor's office urgent care or an emergency room when a new respiratory disease is circulating we understand that there can be concern and people may feel the need to purchase masks wearing a face mask is not recommended for people who are not sick it's important to that we save those masks for our health care providers who are in close contact with the sick people the most important steps to take to prevent the spread of illness in the community are to wash your hands for at least 20 seconds using soap and water and if you don't know how long that is you don't know how long that is you can sing the abc song twice if you don't have access to hand washing facilities you can use a hand sanitizer with at least 60 alcohol content you should clean and disinfect frequently touched surfaces just with what you are already using every day nothing special stay home if you're sick and last but not least make sure you have the most accurate information about the disease and please share it with your friends and family i'd like to thank everyone again for coming here today to discuss this emerging topic i would again reiterate that we really encourage people to seek out those accurate credible sources of information you can find information on alpaso county public health website and please reach out if you have any questions i'd now like to open it to broader questions i think there certainly is a lot of misinformation that circulates it's hard when a new virus hits because there's a lot of fear around that and we completely understand that concern and that's where we really encourage people to seek out your public health officials your health care those sources that are going to have that information that's coming directly from various entities so we are in close contact with the centers for disease control and prevention the state health department local public health agencies hospitals so those are your sources that are really going to have that up-to-date information and we would encourage that people seek out those sources and share that with their audience so we'll start with the health department the incident commander what they've done is uh and i'll let her speak to it but we're there to support them so why don't you go ahead and start with your incident command structure that you've set up and then we'll go from there is that good so within the health department we have activated our incident command structure and what that does is allow us to streamline our response and bring together our specialists to focus on specific areas including our communications efforts the logistical supports we need for this response and our operations component that includes uh regular monitoring of the disease progression so that allows us to be more nimble and responsive and it also allows us to leverage our supports within the agency more efficiently and within the community so i would like to reiterate that 80 percent or more of individuals infected with COVID-19 will have mild symptoms and the best place of care for those individuals is to remain at home and monitor their health in their homes and that will help prevent overburden on our health care systems and all of our health care systems have been working very closely with El Paso County Public Health to plan and coordinate to create additional flexibility and capacity so that we can address the health needs of our community and uh leading some of those efforts has been our medical director dr robin johnson would you care to sure so i i think it's really important to understand the um messaging that we are giving so as we work through um what that means for communication and making sure that we have appropriate allocation of our resources then we have reached out to our providers not only from the hospital systems that are represented here today but our private practitioners as well so that our messaging is consistent and that they we can facilitate to answering the questions of our patients and clients that may be out in the community and then assuring that they know what to be watching for and can call in if they have changes and with the advice of their physician can make the choice to get tested to or to seek higher levels of care that tertiary system of showing up at an urgent care or an emergency room and then again notifying those agencies that they are going to be arriving and um does that answer the question so the hospitals are constantly as we in public health do some background and we're constantly thinking about emergency preparedness they have those same processes in place and they are addressing that and we are speaking about some of the innovations and things that we can do to be prepared and protect not only the community that is out and at large but the community that is already in the hospital for other reasons and so yes they are preparing for that so as an epidemiologist that's what we would do under any circumstance of any disease is once we find that one case um our responsibilities tried to determine where that it came from and then by speaking to that individual as well as um seeing where they have been in a certain period of time for which they would have been contagious to others so that's part of a regular routine system of surveillance that we do um in terms of would we quarantine or isolate so an ill individual at this point in time we are recommending be isolated meaning they're away from other people so that they can't share it with anyone else for at least um well we're doing serological testing so we know when they no longer have the virus is what they're practicing in other parts of the country so we would do the same given that guidance at this point in time um once that that person is clear of the virus then we would say that they can come out of isolation for people that we know that have been around them um we at this point in time will be recommending a quarantine of 14 days from the last day that they were around that person um and so we will work individually with each of those persons to talk through what that looks like you are correct that we have no confirmed cases in El Paso County or Colorado at this time there has been a lot of work between our federal partners at Centers for Disease Control and our state partners at the uh state lab to increase our testing capabilities for the state testing is ongoing throughout the state and what we are focused on is our response should a test result be positive our state lab has capacity and is doing testing and if a test were to come back positive we will be taking action on that so so we are not speaking at this point to county level testing data because for one thing that is um confidential information for the people who are being tested and the informative part of the testing that we need to take action on and that we would share with our community is if we have a positive test the negative tests occurring are less informative to our response certainly I'd be happy to so isolation is in reference to somebody who is ill and because of their symptoms we are asking them to stay home quarantine is a recommendation for a person who is not ill but because of an exposure concern we are also asking them to stay home so the difference being illness uh resulting in isolation versus quarantine yes so what we do know that is circulating in our community right now is flu so before we um test for COVID-19 we are going to rule out some of the things that we know are already circulating in our community and that helps us focus our laboratory capacity more efficiently on identifying the testing that we do need to focus on so I would like to ask our medical director to come up as she's been coordinating some of our communication around testing sure so when we um the the test is being developed and actually has obviously been developed so it was being held at the CDC because we have to not only produce the number of tests but there has to be validation of the lab so that we know that we're getting an accurate test at this point the test is available at our state public health lab and they do have increasing numbers the tests as those become available at this point it is not an unlimited resource so we still are using clinical acumen as we decide on our patients that will need to be tested and we're doing that in conjunction with our clinicians in the various agencies and their communication with the lab to assure that we are being good stewards of the resources that we do have and I'm sorry you had a second part yeah and so that exactly there is um some variability to that it was longer when we had to curry it to the CDC now that it is at the state level it is much quicker it's 24 to 48 hours if we have increasing numbers there may be a queue but we're anticipating that we could get the test results back in 24 to 48 hours at this point yes so that is part of what we're asking our community to really think through in the preparation so if you were to have a family member that became ill what would you want to do to be able to take care of them and that may be that it's going to be that two-week period so understanding what that would look like with your work and I know that businesses are talking through what that would look like maybe telecommuting and some other options that will be available and you'll be needing to talk to your businesses and your own program managers about that but also having the supplies that you would want to again care for them at home that's all right yeah so we are really working on streamlining that and there are various agencies across right so it starts with your own PCP your own primary care physician there's also hospital lines and health link at El Paso County we do have our call-in number and the availability there's also co-help from the state level that you can call in and there are resources I believe that are being passed out with those links so that individuals will know who to call and we are getting those messages out where you can get the information if there were to be you know you're not getting through to the number and the time that you would like that there are options of expertise that you could call to absolutely so estimates for the response that will be required are an evolving evaluation of the situation as things evolve we may need to leverage more resources we have resources that our board of health has set aside to help us be prepared to be able to flex capacity within our agency we also have state partners who advocate and are receiving federal support that will enable this to be a robust response so as the situation evolves we will be determining what capacity we need what supports we need and advocating for that let me let me talk about that real quick if there is an event that does come to us and we need the resources there are federal dollars they go from federal to state to the local community and that's not an unusual thing that happens all the time we've seen that during Waldo Canyon fire and Black Forest fire and a few others so that that system's already in place and just know those dollars will come our way so I can speak to the military bases we've been coordinating with all military bases within El Paso County we've already started that communication bill I'll turn that over to the doc so I think that some of this is in that realm again of preparation and we live here in Colorado and routinely you know you get in your car you make sure that you've got gas you've rotated your tires and you put your seatbelt on knowing that you have things to get about in your day and there's an opportunity for an accident but that's not what drives us however when there's a snowstorm coming we stop and rethink that and we prepare a little different we put a blanket perhaps a shovel some food and water in case we were to be in the snowbank and then as these things are spreading and we look at the storm as it approaches we stop to rethink we use some common sense is this really the storm I need to go to right out in I'm sorry should I leave home or would today be a day it would be prudent to just hang out in my home and I think that those are the questions that individuals need to be answering as they look at what is occurring and you can look at the CDC website to see what the travel advisories are and I would advise that you really consider those seriously and then take some time to pause and say it is this a trip I do need to take or perhaps we can rearrange my travel plans it depends upon what the nature of the economic impact is there's the governor the governor can declare a an emergency trigger funds coming our way and things like that there's you know obviously the things I'm concerned about a cancellation of events and to a certain extent those sorts of losses are not recoverable from the city standpoint it also always translates to tax revenue and it just means we have less money to spend next year and we have to make scrutinize the budget and make decisions because unlike the federal government we have to have a balanced budget so as we conclude today I just wanted to share a resource the state does have co-help which is a hotline available to the public with any general questions about COVID-19 and that number is 1-877-462-2911 and they have that available in English Spanish Mandarin and many other languages so I'd like to thank everyone again for coming and let you know that public health will be available for questions as well as representatives from your local hospitals thank you thank you