MURRAY – A year ago, on Sunday, St. George’s resident Mark Jorgensen arrived at the Intermountain Medical Center in Murray and became the first Utahn with a confirmed case of COVID-19 to be treated in the state.
Dr. Todd Vento and Jorgensen of Intermountain attended a virtual meeting on Sunday afternoon to discuss the birthday, and about Jorgensen’s experience with the coronavirus and what doctors have learned about COVID-19 in the months since he was treated. Vento, an infectologist who treated Jorgensen, said it was “hard to believe” that Jorgensen arrived a year ago.
Jorgensen was a passenger on the cruise ship Diamond Princess that became a petri dish for coronavirus infections while sailing near Japan last year. His wife, Jerri, tested positive on the ship and was taken to a Japanese hospital. Mark Jorgensen was flown from Japan by the United States government and tested positive for COVID-19 for the first time after landing in California.
Days later, Jorgensen was flown to his home state to be treated at Intermountain Medical Center. Later, Jorgensen was allowed to be quarantined in his own home with his wife.
He never showed symptoms of the virus.
Vento explained that, at the time, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention required patients to have a negative test for COVID-19 before they could leave isolation. Jorgensen was hiding in his home for weeks before the CDC changed its orientation and he left the isolation in March 2020.
“I remember that call,” said Vento, “calling him … and one day saying, ‘Hey, you’re free to get out of isolation.’ I remember him saying, “Wait, I’m still sure.” I said, “That’s right, but now the CDC has a new approach.”
“I think the lesson is that we learn things,” added Vento. “We have to change, we have to adjust. People said not to wear masks; it probably slowed us down a bit. Now we know the data is amazing for masks and we need to wear masks and we need to accept that. But you can see that when you there are these steep learning curves at the beginning, sometimes people interpret this as, ‘Oh, maybe you don’t know what you’re doing.’ Well, the reality is that we really didn’t. And why is that? We had a virus that we never heard of, never saw, until December 2019. We had to learn very fast. “
‘I don’t regret going’
Jorgensen said he believed he took the COVID-19 on the flight back to the United States.
“It was all a nightmare,” he recalled, recalling the “battle between the CDC, the State Department and the White House” over whether he and his fellow Americans should be allowed to return.
“That plane ride back was quite interesting,” he said. “Everyone was packed on this 747 cargo plane. I’m sure there was some transmission going on there.”
Jorgensen said it was a little “intriguing” to see the “confusion” being made about him, because he had no symptoms.
“I felt great all the time,” he said, but he understands that “people were learning” about the virus and “what it was all about”.
Today, asymptomatic patients with COVID-19 are generally advised to isolate at home for 10 days.
Jorgensen said the year since he left isolation has been “quite monotonous”. But he is not sure if he “skated free” on COVID-19 as he thought.
“I have a fog of memory that I’m hearing is a symptom of this, and I’m wondering if that is part of that,” said Jorgensen. He is also having trouble with his eyes that his ophthalmologist is “convinced” that he is related.
Jorgensen said he has not yet had a coronavirus vaccine and wants to “see how it works” first, but will likely follow his doctor’s advice and eventually get one.
He said he doesn’t regret boarding the Diamond Princess.
“I don’t live life that way,” he said. “I did what I did and that’s what happened … I don’t regret going. We had a lot of fun and had a little side adventure afterwards, and okay, that’s what happened. And yes, I definitely plan to take a cruise. again.
“I’m actually in Costa Rica right now,” he said. “This is our first international trip since all this. So obviously, we are not going to let any fear of it stop us. This is just one type of our philosophy of life.”