Although the first confirmed case of Covid-19 in the United States was recorded in January 2020 in the state of Washington, it was the Northeast that suffered the greatest impact of the disease that spring. New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island recorded the highest cases and deaths per capita, among all states at that time, between March and May 2020.
“It was hell,” said Dr. Brian Strom, chancellor of Rutgers biomedical and health sciences in New Jersey, who said health facilities in the region were overloaded, dealing with a shortage of exams, personal protective equipment for employees , fans and beds for patients and even space for the dead.
“The situation got so bad that we asked for a parking space for body bags,” he said.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases that would be put in the spotlight, said the coronavirus can kill 100,000 to 200,000 people in the United States while infecting “millions” of others.
In March 2020, cases arose in more than a dozen states and countries worldwide, and the World Health Organization declared the outbreak to be a pandemic. Although the Trump White House tried to minimize the severity of the outbreak, many state officials took drastic measures to stem the spread of the virus.
California issued its first home stay order on March 19, and in a week, another 21 states issued similar orders.
Dr. Brad Spellberg, medical director of the Medical Center at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles County, said he believed the stay order helped prevent a spring outbreak in the state.
“It stopped us from becoming what happened to New York in the spring. I think that if we had waited another week or two, we would end up completely overwhelmed like New York, ”he said.
Requests to stay at home, which closed bars, restaurants, schools and all businesses that were not considered “essential” by the states, caused unemployment to skyrocket. Nearly 300,000 people filed for unemployment insurance in the week prior to applying for a stay at home in California. In the week of the order, that number jumped to more than 3 million.
In Louisiana, cases exploded after Mardi Gras celebrations. These cases would foreshadow what was to come, as spring break meetings spread the virus more deeply into the country.
While some states tried to reopen the measures, the authorities encountered obstacles that were repeated in the following months: the fatigue of the blockade would lead many to disregard the protection measures and to gather in large groups.
“If you look at the data, as soon as the county was closed in March last year, cases started to go down. And they did go down over April and May,” said Spellberg. “And then, in June, things started to get better, probably because people got fatigued from the blockade.”