On One Year Anniversary Of Michigan's First COVID Case, Henry Ford Health Doctor Reflects On The Challenges Of Pandemic
(CBS DETROIT) - March 10th, 2020 was election day in Michigan, and just a few hours after voters casted their ballots for their presidential nominee, Governor Whitmer made this stunning announcement.
"We have identified the first presumptive positive case of Coronavirus."
We would later find out, there were in fact two positive cases, one in Wayne and Oakland County. Henry Ford Critical Care Dr. Jennifer Swiderek recalls a patient coming into their hospital the very next day with symptoms.
"At that time we did not have our own lab testing for Coronavirus we had to send everything to the state"
Dr. Swiderek says it took 5 days before they could confirm a positive test. She says not long after just a little over a week since the first cases were announced, the hospital unfortunately experienced their first patient death from the virus.
"At the time we did not know a lot about the disease of course you heard things but what everyone knew is that it could be deadly and so the fear of contracting the disease yourself the fear more so of taking it home to your family really was there in everyone's mind."
Sadly some Henry Ford staff did contract the virus, and a nurse losing her life to the illness. Dr. Swiderek says although staff saw a lot of death, after while they begin to see progress with patients through different treatment options.
"We treat these patients the best we could and we did start to seeing some survival."
Now a year later and over a half million cases and nearly 16 thousand deaths, Michiganders finally seeing a light at the end of a very dark Covid tunnel. With the roll out of 3 vaccines.
"That was the glimmer of hope, to really turn this around." Said Dr. Swiderek
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