Greetings here from COVID-19 Ground Zero, near the King/Snohomish county line in Washington State. One of the things I hope to focus one in these diaries is whether a narrative starts to develop between states or local responses to offer lessons in slowing the spread of this virus.
it was only 19 days ago that Evergreen Hospital in Kirkland, where one of my kids was born, announced the first reported death from Covid-19 in the US on February 29. But here’s the thing.. that wasn’t actually the first death.
The following day would see the first reported death from a resident at the Life Care Center, and the tsunami had begun. There is a good story on all of the things that happened at LCC here, but the part I want to focus on is that the tragedy there is a microcosm of what we as a nation face everywhere now:
On Feb. 19, a sick resident was hospitalized. Life Care now says this was its first known coronavirus case, and that it was told only of the diagnosis more than 10 days after the hospitalization. Killian said Life Care did not know the current health of the resident.
Just as with social visitors, first responders called out for the home’s ill were also unknowingly exposed to the coronavirus. The city of Kirkland said on March 10 that a firefighter had tested positive. Five remain quarantined.
It’s up to others (and, eventually judges, most likely), to come to conclusions about what the senior living center role in the spread was, but you can really see in this how early in an outbreak, long timelines between getting information to inform public health decision result in lost time and exponentially increasing chances of infection. 35 of the 151 Covid-19 deaths (so far) in the nation were LCC residents, according to the most recent data from King County/Seattle Public Health, which also listed one of the death reported on March 17 as:
A man in his 80s, who died at Life Care on 2/28
Notice that date? The take home here is that people were sick and dying of this long before anyone really knew that people were sick and dying of this. The COVID 19 tracking project keeps a nice running list of state by state testing, and clearly shows that as of March 4th, long after it was too late for LCC and local medical professionals to put together the picutre, only 969 tests had been completed nationwide. There are other more informed diaries that talk about the timelines of testing, but you get the picture in this that the US was way, way, way behind the 8 ball because of lack of testing until this virus was already widespread in the community and was already taking lives.
So, now what? What now is that we need to start learning, and fast, how to track and minimize the spread of this disease in every state, city and town of the country. That will determine which communities look more like South Korea and which will look more like Italy. And it all starts with widespread testing for the disease to identify where it is concentrated and target isolation efforts there. As of today, WA state, thanks to aggressive efforts by the University of Washington and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has tested over 15,000 people, and is ramping that up aggressively each day.
The next thing is to amass as many medical resources (hospital beds, respiration equipment, and trained staff) and mobilize them to where they are needed. Guess what.. Washington is working on that, too!
“King County needs to site facilities that will create 3,000 additional medical beds for King County. It is anticipated that the Shoreline Temporary Field Hospital will be able to provide up to 200 beds. The Shoreline site will be able to serve ill individuals from Shoreline and patients from the greater Puget Sound Region,” the city’s website says.
Washington State has also tapped $200 million from it’s rainy day fund to address the crisis, of which $175 million is going directly to the public helalth system.
Finally, we need to put a huge, unconditional safety net around those likely to be most impacted by the effects of the outbreak and interruptions to basic needs like health care, housing, and food security. Today, Governor Inslee placed a 30-day moratorium on evictions for tenants statewide., and several other measures are anticipated in the coming days to soften the economic blow. Will promised resources from the federal level help? Absolutely, and WA State will benefit from whatever they can muster, but also WA state is starting to take all of this into it’s own hands as best they can, and this will save that many more lives.
After a slow start, WA State is taking it upon itself to stop the spread and mobilize the resources that are going to be needed for this crisis. And don’t think for a second it won’t make a difference. Today, WA state had 175 new cases, up to 1187, up from 1012 the day before, only about an 18% increase from the day before. We need more data to confirm this trend, but as this virus plays out, you’re going to see variance in how successful different communities and states are at “flattening the curve”. I hope to find that data aggregated somewhere soon and start updating future posts with that.
Stay socially distant all, and wash you hands.