“This virus is just everywhere”: Colorado businesses struggle to stay adequately staffed as omicron surges

Overwhelmed by omicron, Denver restaurants are being forced to temporarily close their doors when they don’t have enough healthy workers to function.

Transit officials struggle to keep buses on the road when drivers call in sick.

Pharmacies have cut back the hours they’re open due to understaffing.

Frontline workers whose jobs have required them to be public-facing through the pandemic are being hit hard as COVID-19’s omicron variant tore through Colorado over the past month. Workplaces already struggling with staffing as employees left over pandemic-induced burnout now are seeing more workers contracting the virus, local business owners and experts said.

And it’s not just hospitals and schools struggling to stay staffed amid omicron; more and more parts of everyday life are being impacted by the virus’s winter surge.

“It feels like going back to 2020 in a lot of ways,” said Nicole Sullivan, owner of BookBar, the Denver bookstore and wine bar that’s operating under reduced hours this month. “I’m remembering now the exhaustion of having to constantly pivot and make new decisions and change up your business model but it’s easier because we’ve been there before.”

More than 10,000 people in Colorado had tested positive for COVID-19 on nine of the previous 10 days as of Friday afternoon, state data shows — and the actual number infected may be significantly higher. An average of 28% of tests performed over the last week were positive, an indication the state doesn’t have a full picture of how widely the virus is spreading.

Health officials estimated between one in 10 and one in 15 people in Colorado is contagious.

Compared to previous iterations of the virus, omicron is more transmissible and better able to penetrate the protections offered by vaccination and prior infection. Though the variant is less likely to cause severe illness, the number of people with COVID-19 in the state’s hospitals has risen more than 60% since Christmas and surpassed the delta variant’s fall peak.

Some Denver restaurants and bars began closing before Christmas as omicron’s rapid ascent was just beginning, and late December and early January saw a host of dining spots and retailers — Milkroll Rolled Ice Cream, MI Sports Denver and Daughter Thai Kitchen and Bar among them — announcing brief closures or altered hours due to staffing shortages.

The Cow Lot, a western wear shop in Wheat Ridge, informed customers it didn’t have enough staff to work a booth at this year’s National Western Stock Show. Benzina, an Italian restaurant in Denver, was forced to close one night last week “due to short staffing and keeping our neighbors safe,” according to a post on social media.

After about half of BookBar’s 15 employees were out with COVID-19 at the same time, Sullivan scaled back the store’s January hours, going from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. to 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., so there would only be one shift to fill during the day. She also switched to to-go orders in lieu of serving food and drinks indoors, and canceled in-person storytime readings for the month.

“All it took is just one person to get sick, and we started falling like dominoes,” she said.

Employees who test positive are being asked to stay home for a minimum of five days, in keeping with guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Once they no longer have symptoms, BookBar is requiring employees to test negative before returning to work.

“We want to give people incentives to stay home if they’re positive or even if they have symptoms, so we’re paying everybody for hours they would have worked, so our employees don’t have to worry about missing pay or worry how they’re going to pay bills because it’s obviously not their fault if they’re sick and can’t come to work,” Sullivan said.

“We’re doing everything we can”

The Regional Transportation District, on the other hand, is offering people financial incentives to show up.

The agency said a surge of new coronavirus cases and an existing need for frontline workers are adversely impacting its ability to provide its usual transportation services. Between Dec. 15 and Jan. 5, the agency reported 77 new employee COVID-19 cases across facilities and operating divisions.

RTD is offering a $4,000 hiring bonus the agency hopes will help with recruitment efforts amid a worker shortage, said Tina Jaquez, RTD spokesperson.

“The difficult thing is we’re already understaffed and trying to hire, but combining that with people calling in sick has been really challenging for us,” Jaquez said.

As operators call in sick, Jaquez said RTD is reaching out to workers who have signed up to pick up extra shifts only to learn those people are sick, too.

Jaquez urged RTD riders to sign up for service alerts so they’ll be notified if a bus route drops because an operator is out sick.

“The other thing is we are trying to ask operators if they’re able to work late — so not mandating — but asking if they’re willing to work later for overtime,” Jaquez said. “We are just asking people to be patient. We’re doing everything we can. We know it’s important and a lot of people rely on us.”

“Running a marathon with a broken leg”

Scott Boyd, one of the owners of Denver-based restaurant The Rotary, said the end of 2021 and start to 2022 have been so unhinged that all he can do some days is laugh.

Not only did The Rotary’s 2-week-old Louisville location burn down in the Marshall fire last month, but its Denver restaurant closed to diners and switched to take-out only for a week amid a COVID-19 outbreak among the staff around the same time.

Four employees testing positive on the same day triggered the switch to shut things down, Boyd said. The Rotary’s Denver location has since reopened.

“That was the first time we’ve had to close because of staffing shortages,” Boyd said. “We’ve been able to make it through all of this until then, so it’s at another level. This virus is just everywhere.”

Boyd said the company’s instant messaging app was blowing up with employees informing management they tested positive for the coronavirus around the holidays, prompting the owners to make the call to switch to take-out.

“Opening a restaurant is hard, so if you liken that to running a marathon, running a restaurant right now is like running a marathon with a broken leg,” Boyd said. “It’s hard and now people are either sick from COVID or you can’t hire… or you can’t get all the stuff because of the supply chain issues and you’re driving all over town looking everywhere for to-go paper cups for coffee and you can’t find any.

“It’s to a point where it’s almost comical, which makes it a little bit easier,” he added. “Sometimes when things are so bad you can barely even believe it, you’re like, ‘OK, I can tolerate it because it doesn’t even make sense how ridiculous this is.” ‘

“The perfect storm”

People relying on accessing their prescription medications could run into obstacles as “the perfect storm” hits Colorado’s pharmacists, according to Emily Zadvorny, executive director of the Colorado Pharmacists Society.

Certain Walgreens pharmacy locations are closed on the weekends — one at 66th Avenue and Wadsworth Boulevard in Arvada, for example — due to understaffing and others advertise on the chain’s website they’ll be closed during certain times mid-day so pharmacists can eat.

“We have people out sick and it’s always hard to find backup staff, and we have a situation where pharmacists are not happy with their working conditions in a lot of the major chains and there’s a higher level of burnout and they are deciding to leave,” Zadvorny said.

Zadvorny said there are hundreds, if not thousands, of pharmacy technician position openings in Colorado right now.

In addition to what is already a demanding job — filling prescriptions, counseling patients, collecting data and administering the usual vaccines — the pandemic has piled on the administration of COVID-19 tests and vaccinations with the same amount of staff.

The most recent CDC guidance anticipated staffing shortages could become widespread and loosened requirements that health care workers stay home if they have COVID-19. Under normal circumstances, nurses and other hospital staff are supposed to stay home for 10 days, unless they have a negative test and improving symptoms.

In a staffing “crisis,” however, they can keep working, though the CDC still recommends that they only do so if they don’t have a fever.

Dan Weaver, a spokesman for UCHealth, said the health network’s employees with “minor and improving” cold symptoms like a runny nose or sore throat aren’t required to get tested, though they can choose to do so. They can continue working as long as they feel well enough, he said.

Those with serious symptoms, like a fever, cough, or shortness of breath, have to be tested and stay home for at least five days, Weaver said. Staff who still have a fever after five days will need to isolate at home longer, as will those who have compromised immune systems, he said.

More health care workers are out at the same time that patient numbers are surging, and when the field was already depleted. About 2,100 fewer people worked in Colorado hospitals in November 2021 than in February 2020, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Zadvorny said pharmacies are expected to always be open and accessible, unlike other establishments, but that some pharmacies are getting to the point where there aren’t enough resources to do the work safely, thereby forcing closures or reduced hours.

“Pharmacists want to do what’s right for patients so this a really tough time for them because what they want to do and what they’re able to do right now are a little bit hard,” Zadvvorny said. “Have some grace and some patience and understand that their workload has just inflated.”

“We need your help now”

Due to rising costs and difficulty obtaining certain foods like pastrami, Rosenberg’s Bagels & Delicatessen owner Joshua Pollack said taking beloved items off his restaurants’ menus was what worried him most a couple weeks ago.

Last week, though, he found himself forced to close his Five Points and Stanley Marketplace locations for several days due to COVID-19 outbreaks among staff.