Albany County, first in state, shoots past 1000 confirmed cases
Ongoing surge includes 451 active cases — 1 percent of the county population
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| Source: Wyo. Department of Health |
A testament to the recent exponential increase in infections locally, active cases surged to 451, meaning more than 1 percent of the county population had the virus Friday afternoon.
“I think we are at a place currently that we were hoping to avoid back in April and May,” County Public Health Officer Jean Allais said. “Overall, a higher number of active patients means that there are increased demands for testing, treatment, isolation and all the equipment and resources that are associated with COVID-19 treatment. Many patients are without symptoms, and for those people, the challenge is discipline with their isolation regimen.”
There is no vaccine or cure for COVID-19. While several potential vaccines are being fast-tracked, the medical advice professionals and experts have shared since March has been aimed at slowing the spread and not overwhelming the healthcare system:
Wash your hands. Social distance. Wear a mask.
In Wyoming now, medical experts’ worst fear is being realized and the already strained nature of rural healthcare is being pushed to the limit. Hospitals in at least Cody, Casper and Laramie have hit capacity, or come near enough to it that some patients were sent out of state for care.
In Albany County, the virus is surging exponentially.
At Stitches Acute Care Center in Laramie, Chief Operating Officer Amy Surdam said her staff had braced for an increase in cases, but not the explosion of cases the county has seen throughout the last month.
“COVID just continues to shock and surprise us all and we continue to flex and adapt to whatever it throws at us,” Surdam said. “But it’s been exhausting and I just don’t see any end in the near future. What’s happening now — it’s kind of out of control. And there’s drastic community spread, a lot of asymptomatic patients, and there aren’t any countermeasures being mandated to slow what’s happening.”
Surdam said Stitches is hiring new staff as quickly as possible in response to the surge.
“You can’t just add 12 people if there’s only six people to train them,” she said. “So we have to add a few at a time, get them operational, then add a few at a time, get them operational.”
The county’s statistics — available publicly on the Wyoming Department of Health’s website — mean that at least 1 out of every 32 people in the county has tested positive at some point between March and now. That includes University of Wyoming students, but it is by no means limited to the campus.
Nichol Bondurant — an English teacher at Laramie High School — was the county’s third positive case, receiving her test results on the final day of March.
“I was scared on and off, but the first two weeks I was so fatigued and loopy from fever, that I had no idea how terrified my poor husband — banished to our spare bedroom in the basement while also being my main caregiver — was for me,” she said.
Bondurant had a fever, shortness of breath, low oxygen saturation and a cough. She also lost her sense of smell and taste for almost a month.
Bondurant has recovered, but even having the virus for a short time can leave lasting damage to a person’s health. For example, that cough never went away and Bondurant must still uses O2 at night for her low oxygen levels. Oxygen is essential for the normal functioning of a human body and Bondurant wonders what will happen to her brain, heart and other organs.
“My voice is different now — a bit more raspy — and when I have to talk for large spans of time, which is essential as an English teacher, it gets worse,” she said. “I do have good days, also, however, when my oxygen levels are pretty solid, my voice sounds almost normal and I can even get a good HIIT workout or yoga practice in. Bad days, the stairs feel like a struggle. I've just learned to listen to my body and adjust my activity levels accordingly.”
Listening to those body cues, Bondurant said she has had to learn to forgive herself when she can’t accomplish everything she used to in a day. With the recent surge in Albany County, she has decided to be more open about her experience.
“As people scoffed at mask ordinances, claimed it was ‘no different than the flu,’ and encouraged us to open the middle school and high school to numbers of students that could not make social distancing the least bit possible even as cases in our county surged — I felt I had to share my story with others,” Bondurant said. “I worry that my students or colleagues with compromised immunity or pre-existing conditions, especially heart- and lung-related conditions, could actually die from this virus.”
She also worries about those students’ and colleagues’ loved ones, who could themselves be at risk. Bondurant does not want anyone to go through what she did.
“I worry about my community and my town,” she said. “I also worry about what a growing surge will do for the social-emotional health of everyone. This constant level of stress and unease that has become synonymous with 2020 cannot be healthy for anyone, from our K-12 and college students — who have lost the sense of connection and normalcy we all took for granted when we were students — all the way to our oldest citizenry, who must worry if contracting the virus will be a death sentence.”
How did we get here?
In March, Gov. Mark Gordon began issuing public health orders that changed and restricted many aspects of life — from how businesses had to operate to how large public gatherings could be.
K-12 schools and the University of Wyoming shifted to virtual education, helping the county avoid the devastation wrought in heavily populated states such as California and New York, and countries like Italy, Iran or Spain.
Dr. Grace Gosar at the Downtown Clinic in Laramie said this early “shutdown mentality” helped.
“We really geared up for a surge at the Downtown Clinic,” she said. “And thankfully, the university sending students home and not having them return in the spring — and K-12 schools shutting down as well — I think had everything to do with why we didn’t have so many cases.”
But Gov. Gordon was one of seven governors nationwide not to institute a shelter-in-place order — despite calls for such an order from the Wyoming Medical Society. As the pandemic wore on, government responses became more politicized, the state’s appetite for mandated restrictions dissipated and Wyoming’s health orders became more relaxed.
“I really do feel we prioritize personal freedoms over community care,” Gosar said. “We care more about our ability to not wear a mask than we care about our community and our willingness to protect vulnerable people. And we are arrogant to think we are not those vulnerable people.”
Disinformation and polarization have made the job of fighting coronavirus difficult, Gosar said, adding partisanship has even crept into the medical community.
“I’ve heard of orthopedic surgeons in town, during the pandemic, refusing to wear a mask,” she said. “I know of dentists — not in this community, but one that I’m related to — who wore a mask regularly in his office prior to the pandemic, who now doesn’t feel a mask makes as much sense as it used to. This is crazy to me.”
That polarization is evident in local government too, where the county’s highest board — the Albany County Commission — is divided on how seriously the pandemic should be taken.
During a discussion at the commission’s meeting Tuesday, Commissioner Heber Richardson said the existence of co-morbidities brought into question CDC statistics about the national death toll — echoing Commission Chair Terri Jones’ comments earlier this month that such figures were exaggerated. Jones, but not Richardson, had said the pandemic was “totally politically motivated.”
Richardson pointed to the county’s generally young, generally healthy population as a reason not to worry about the recent surge in cases.
“I’m not that alarmed by the rise in cases — but at some point, it would be an issue if it gets into vulnerable populations,” he said. “And I don’t know how many patients are at the hospital right now getting extra special love and care. But eventually COVID has to go through us all, or we have to get a vaccine. I’m just not that alarmed that there are cases being diagnosed.”
Pete Gosar, Grace’s brother, is the three-member commission’s sole voice advocating for more direct action on COVID-19.
He responded to Richardson’s comments by pointing out that “herd immunity” — the process of letting the virus spread through the population so that survivors develop antibodies against it — would require an intolerable number of deaths.
“I think we should be alarmed,” Gosar said. “220,000 people have died in our country. Eight million cases. I’m not sure why that doesn’t alarm you, but it does alarm me.”
The University of Wyoming, following a phased opening throughout the fall semester, is open for in-person instruction. While about one-third of courses are offered entirely online — and some students are completely virtual — the campus has still been home to numerous outbreaks on sports teams, in residence halls, and within individual departments.
The university has also launched a large-scale testing program, now testing each staff member once a week and each student twice. The rapid, recurring tests offered through the university, however, do not account for the rise in cases because the percentage of tests coming back positive — a metric measured by the Department of Health — has also been rising throughout the last month.
Public health guidance — like the recommendation to wear a mask — has been inconsistently followed throughout the community, Allais said.
“From my perspective many residents have been doing an outstanding job at following the issued guidance,” she said. “Many have not and are putting themselves, their friends, families, coworkers and strangers at unnecessary risk.”
Where are we headed?
Lindsay Sweley, a telephone operator at the university, is one of the county’s “probable” cases. That means she did not take a test and receive a positive result, but is assumed to have the virus given her symptoms and closeness with a confirmed case. So, Sweley quarantined with her husband, who had tested positive.
“I was scared as hell,” Sweley said. “I have asthma that I was hospitalized for in the past. I was sure this damn thing would kill me. But as time went on, I never got a fever or experienced breathing trouble. Mostly I felt exhausted, and had the worst body aches of my life. My eyes stung. I had a headache. After several days, I lost my sense of smell and taste.”
Sweley is still recovering, and now she is thinking about the wider community.
“Having this — and facing the fear that this might kill me — makes me wish people would take it more seriously,” she said. “Yes, most people end up like me with a mild case. But what about those who don't? I think this current surge could have been easily prevented. Yes, lockdowns and restrictions and mask mandates bum everyone out and are hard on the economy. But a dumpload of sick, and dead, people also bum everyone out and are hard on the economy.”
Medical professionals are anticipating the current rise to continue, especially as the cold weather sets in.
“We’re heading into the indoor world, so we’re going to be spending, proportionately, way more hours inside,” Grace Gosar said, adding that doors and windows will be cracked less frequently. “The indoor space now becomes much more likely to offer an infected environment.”
Allais said the virus is “stubborn” and will be with us for a long time. She said the future of the pandemic is up to individuals, who need to act responsibly.
“We can expect change in the coming weeks,” she said. “Only time will tell if that change will be for the better or for worse. Citizens can help lower case loads and transmission by paying close attention to social distancing, hand washing, wearing face coverings in public and avoiding gatherings. CDC guidance is the minimum estimated behavior that will stem the spread of the virus, but people should feel free to increase their practice of the CDC guidance.”
But Gosar said she is disappointed with leadership at the county and state level, which has focused on imploring individuals to take on the burden of stopping the spread.
“Gov. Gordon is going to admonish the people of Wyoming and tell us to wear a mask — when is he going to do something different?” Gosar said. “Because he’s been doing that from the get-go and yet Wyoming is on the increase, a dramatic increase, right now. And how many times are we going to watch something like Florida, or New York, or Italy happen before we decide that a mask mandate is going to make a difference, and these measures are useful?”
More communication and action from those in positions of power could alter the trajectory of the pandemic in Wyoming, Gosar said.
“It feels as if we’re not in a pandemic when it comes to healthcare leadership,” she said.
In the absence of government decrees, doctors and medical professionals are left asking members of the community to adhere to the best advice they have. But, as Surdam said, the pandemic will continue to spread and to strain local resources.
“We can expect more of the same,” Surdam said. “I would really advise people who want to take a proactive position to wear their mask, social distance, wash their hands — to do what they can to slow the spread.” An abbreviated version of this story appeared in the Saturday edition of the Laramie Boomerang.
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