A year ago today: Treating the first coronavirus patient in the US January 21, 2021 at 4:11 pm
Dr. Scott Lindquist, Washington state epidemiologist for communicable disease, spoke during a press conference about the first confirmed U.S. case of a virus known as the 2019 novel coronavirus at the state Public Health Laboratories on January 21, 2020 in Shoreline, Washington. The patient diagnosed with the virus, also known as the Wuhan coronavirus, recovered isolation at a hospital in Everett, Washington. (Photo by David Ryder/Getty Images)
Dr. George Diaz is an infectious disease specialist with Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett. He treated the very first confirmed coronavirus patient in the United States, isolating him with the hospital’s strictest Ebola precautions and using a robot for examinations.
Aimee Picchi
Special to USA TODAY
Emergency room nurse Louise McLellan recalls her life prior to contracting COVID-19 in March: She liked to kayak with her husband and make her signature cookie – the peanut butter explosion – to bring to work the next day.
Ten months later, McLellan, 53, still hasn’t fully recovered. She struggles to bake, and kayaking is out of the question because of lingering lung problems that leave her out of breath. That made it difficult to perform her job when she tried returning to work in June.
“I lasted two hours,” she recalls.
The physical demands of an emergency room nurse were too taxing to given her long-haul symptoms, she says. And when she asked to switch to a desk job, her efforts went nowhere. In the end, McLellan went on short-term disability.
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Grace Hauck and Harrison Hill, USA TODAY
Published
7:11 pm UTC Jan. 21, 2021
EVERETT, Wash. – It s been a full year since the first known U.S. case of COVID-19 was confirmed in Snohomish County in a 35-year-old man returning from Wuhan, China.
He was admitted on Jan. 20, 2020, to Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett. The world shifted for us, and the world shifted maybe a little bit earlier here, but it shifted for all of us, Mayor Cassie Franklin told USA TODAY last week. Our city is transformed by this and we still don’t know all the ways because we aren’t through it yet.
Jan. 20 marks 1 year since first U.S. COVID-19 patient was hospitalized; CDC confirmed next day
Jeff Roberson/AP
FILE - In this Nov. 24, 2020, file photo, registered nurse Shelly Girardin, left, is illuminated by the glow of a computer monitor as Dr. Shane Wilson examines COVID-19 patient Neva Azinger inside Scotland County Hospital in Memphis, Mo. After a punishing fall that left hospital struggling, some Midwestern states are seeing a decline in new coronavirus cases. But the signs of improvement are offset by the infection s accelerating spread on both coasts. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson, File)
By: Scripps National
and last updated 2021-01-19 17:49:29-05
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It was one year ago Jan. 20, 2020 that the first case of SARS-CoV-2 infection was reported on U.S. soil.
It was still called the novel coronavirus at the time; at least that s how it was referenced in a CDC statement. By the time a final
Few now believe it was really the country s first case.
Scott Lindquist, MD, Washington s state epidemiologist for communicable disease, said the team at the state s health department wasn t surprised to see a positive case at the time. We had a concern there was ongoing spread before then, Lindquist told
MedPage Today.