BENNINGTON â âWe cannot be paralyzed by anxiety, but we canât be lulled into complacency.â
Those words have guided Dr. Trey Dobson and the Southwestern Vermont Medical Center through a year unlike any other. The COVID-19 pandemic officially reached Vermont on March 7, 2020, when the state Department of Health announced that an adult patient was being treated for the coronavirus at SVMC.
In the year since, 1,480 residents of Bennington County have developed COVID-19, and nine have died. Statewide, the death toll is 207, with nearly 16,000 cases recorded.
The diseaseâs arrival on Benningtonâs doorstep resulted in a ripple of anxiety that had already begun to reverberate across the country: would there be enough protective equipment and ventilators to go around?