On this day- two years ago- the pandemic became real for Lane County. KLCC looks back with Senior Public Health Officer Dr. Patrick Luedtke, on the challenges and achievements that followed Lane County’s first confirmed case of novel coronavirus.
“Early on, when we were at one of these media availabilities with multiple reporters from radio and tv and print media, someone said, ‘Doctor Luedtke, when do you think it’s gonna be here?’ and my response was, ‘I think it’s already here.' And there was literally a gasp in the room.”
The first COVID-19 case in North America was confirmed in Seattle on January 20, 2020. Luedtke recalls thinking it was only a matter of time before the virus would be detected in Oregon and Lane County.
“And sure enough, we had a person become sick with COVID compatible symptoms in late February and if people remember back then, it took a little while to get testing done,” Luedtke said. “We got our test done and we got the confirmed result on March 4th that it was in fact COVID in Lane County.”
Just a few days later, Luedtke said the county had its first COVID confirmed death. “And that was only case number three. It happened pretty quickly,” he said sadly.
Luedtke has some experience with viral outbreaks. He remembers the H1N1 Influenza pandemic, the SARS outbreak, the spread of West Nile Virus. He said he had a sense of what COVID-19 had in store.
“This was not going to be a one-month, three-month, six-month evolution,” he recalled thinking. “And yet, I was hesitant to say, ‘Hey, get ready for a few years.’ Partly because it’s a coronavirus, it’s not an influenza virus.”
“But you also don’t want to do fear mongering and scare people,” Luedkte added. “You want to have data, you want to share what you know. And share the unknowns as well, in a meaningful way.”
Looking back, Luedtke said public health focused on many of the right things early. First, identify cases and isolation them. And then, identify contacts and quarantine.
“The next part is--because this is respiratory and everybody breaths, right? We’re all susceptible—it was a novel virus no one had seen- so we immediately thought, ‘how much PPE, personal protective equipment do we have?’ And those gowns and gloves and masks and hand sanitizer turned out to be a really big deal.”
In fact, Lane County Public Health had stored enough PPE to supply the entire county—including hospitals, clinics and the public.
Luedtke acknowledged there were many challenges local public health departments faced early on. He recalled how the benefits of masking weren’t promoted.
“Turns out that this coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, spreads readily before you’re even symptomatic. So that’s why masks can be helpful,” he said. “We didn’t do well. I don’t think the CDC did well. I don’t think state health departments did very well.”
From the rear view, another early problem in fighting the virus was testing. Luedtke said requiring completely unnecessary blood serum tests wasted time. And he said the brain power of private labs across the country should have been tapped to create reliable tests more rapidly.
“We were missing cases early on that we didn’t test,” Luedtke said. “And they probably had COVID earlier than we realized because we had so many restrictions on getting people tested.”
To date, 470 Lane County residents have died from COVID-19 and health officials know there will be more. With all that has been learned and lost, Luedtke looks for silver linings. Vaccination efforts continue throughout the county with increases in access to the most vulnerable.
He said communication has been a critical part of the pandemic response. There were town halls, regular updates on the public health website, call centers.
Luedtke gets emotional relaying how over 200 medical providers got on a conference call every day to talk about how to fight COVID-19.
“We had providers and nurses and pharmacists from all clinics and hospitals and urgent cares sharing how they’re doing it, in real time,” he said taking off is glasses. “I’m getting a little tearful because it was amazing. Absolutely amazing.”
The years’ long path Luedtke foresaw for this pandemic is where we are now. He said public health has not worked alone.
“Businesses worked hard. And schools worked hard. And non-profits worked hard,” he said. “And many people, through uncertainty, tried to figure out ‘how am I going to do A, B or C: deliver a service, take care of my family, take care of myself?’ And I think that in many ways—successfully.”
Communities may soon return to a greater sense of normalcy when mask mandates are lifted in just over a week. Lane County is now rated at medium risk for COVID-19 transmission.
