A few floors above Hanson's emergency room at EvergreenHealth hospital in Kirkland, Dr. Francis Riedo made the discovery that sent many of Washington's public officials and the Centers for Disease Control into overdrive.
In late February, before the US learned Covid-19 had escaped in its communities, Riedo randomly selected two patients for a coronavirus test. Neither had been out of the country or had any connection to infected countries -- both tested positive.
It proved community spread was already happening.
"It was a moment of recognition that everything had changed," said Riedo, director of infectious disease control at EvergreenHealth. "Over the next five days we tested 42 more and found 32 more patients who were positive."
Many of those came from the Life Care Center down the street in Kirkland.
More than 100 cases and at least 35 deaths were eventually linked to the nursing home, and the nation watched in horror as a macabre parade of ambulances took one patient after another to local hospitals.
Weisfuse, the Cornell professor, said he believes that played a role in how Washingtonians responded.
"(Washington) went through the crucible of having a really difficult initial outbreak that in other places wasn't quite that bad or as evident at that moment," he said.
The Life Care case was an early stumble in the Washington response. Not only were patients dying, a third of the staff fell ill and was unable to return to work. It took more than a week for a federal government medical team to arrive and offer hands-on help.
The governor said the operators of the nursing home share some of the blame for that.
"This corporation had a responsibility for the medical care of their patients," Inslee said. "And to some degree we couldn't just walk in on day one without some coordination with them to really understand the circumstance."
A Life Care spokesman said nursing homes have been held to a different, unfair standard compared to hospitals.
"No hospitals were blamed for deaths that occurred there after being hit with the virus," said Tim Killian, a Life Care spokesman. "The virus happened to us when there was still confusion over how contagious it was and how it spread."
The nursing home was struggling to get enough testing and PPE for its staff, Killian said.
That was, and continues to be, an issue statewide, Inslee said.
"We did not have enough PPE for nurses and many facilities, and to some degree still don't," he said.
He blames President Donald Trump because "there's only one person" who has the power to force mass production of PPE.
"I wasn't disappointed, I was infuriated for weeks." Inslee said. "Because we desperately needed this material."
But he says the federal government has ramped up production and some supplies are coming in. Washington has even been able to return some government-provided ventilators since flattening its curve.
Inslee has started opening things up in his state, but at a cautious pace.
State Parks are open, some construction is allowed again, as are limited in-person car sales. Boeing, the state's largest employer, has workers back on the lines.
By May 31, the state may let people return to dining in restaurants with restrictions, and curbside retail may begin.
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