“I can’t remember why we picked those two patients,” Riedo told me. If he sent her swabs from two patients who had needed ventilators but had tested negative for influenza and other common respiratory diseases, would she test them for COVID-19? At that point, there had been only sixteen detections of the coronavirus in the U.S., and only the one in Washington State. began allowing the testing of patients with unexplained respiratory-tract infections or “fever and/or symptoms of acute respiratory illness.” Riedo called a friend-an E.I.S. Riedo wanted to start warning people that evidence of an outbreak was growing, but he had only suspicions, not facts.Īt the end of February, the C.D.C. For nearly a month, as the hospital’s patients complained of aches, fevers, and breathing problems-and exhibited symptoms associated with COVID-19, such as “glassy” patches in X-rays of their lungs-none of them were evaluated for the disease. Even as EvergreenHealth’s beds began filling with cases of flulike symptoms-including a patient from Life Care, a nursing home two miles away-the hospital’s doctors were unable to test them for the new disease, because none of the sufferers had been to China or been in contact with anyone who had. network, they’ll drop everything to help.”Ī national shortage of diagnostic kits for the new coronavirus meant that only people who had recently visited China were eligible for testing. “If you have a question, or need to understand the local politics somewhere, or need a hand during an outbreak-if you reach out to the E.I.S. “It’s kind of like a secret society, but for saving people,” Riedo told me. The program has more than three thousand graduates, and many now work in state and local governments across the country. are considered America’s shock troops in combatting disease outbreaks. When he heard the patient’s details-a thirty-five-year-old man had walked into an urgent-care clinic with a cough and a slight fever, and told doctors that he’d just returned from Wuhan, China-Riedo said to himself, “It’s begun.”įor more than a week, Riedo had been e-mailing with a group of colleagues who included Seattle’s top doctor for public health and Washington State’s senior health officer, as well as hundreds of epidemiologists from around the country many of them, like Riedo, had trained at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in Atlanta, in a program known as the Epidemic Intelligence Service. Francis Riedo, an infectious-disease specialist, works. The first diagnosis of the coronavirus in the United States occurred in mid-January, in a Seattle suburb not far from the hospital where Dr.
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