One year into the COVID-19 pandemic, what have we learned? I get multiple alerts, every day, related to infections in humans and animals, but this one almost instantly felt different.
There was a cluster of undiagnosed pneumonia cases in Wuhan, China, and it automatically gave me a sense of foreboding. In my world, we know that a cluster of acute respiratory illness could represent “THE Event,” a possible pandemic.
However, most alerts turn out to be nothing, so I parked it in the back of my brain. I made a mental note to send a heads up to our Emergency Departments in the morning, to remind them of the importance of asking about travel history at triage.Truthfully, there was no “Oh my God” moment.