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Grace Hauck and Harrison Hill, USA TODAY
Published
7:11 pm UTC Jan. 21, 2021
EVERETT, Wash. – It s been a full year since the first known U.S. case of COVID-19 was confirmed in Snohomish County in a 35-year-old man returning from Wuhan, China.
He was admitted on Jan. 20, 2020, to Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett. The world shifted for us, and the world shifted maybe a little bit earlier here, but it shifted for all of us, Mayor Cassie Franklin told USA TODAY last week. Our city is transformed by this and we still don’t know all the ways because we aren’t through it yet.
5:49 pm UTC Jan. 19, 2021
EVERETT, Wash. – Hundreds were ill and six had died in China when a 35-year-old man touched down in Seattle after a three-month trip to visit family in Wuhan. He got sick the next day, a Thursday, saw a doctor Sunday and was admitted to the hospital Monday.
He traveled alone. He lived alone. He went into isolation. Alone.
At Providence Regional Medical Center, he spoke to doctors on the other side of the glass window through a telehealth robot and asked for a phone to call family.
It was Jan. 20, 2020, and the United States first known case of the novel coronavirus had been reported in Snohomish County, an area of fewer than a million residents north of Seattle, flanked by the Puget Sound on the west and the Cascade Mountains on the east.