MURRAY: It was Sunday a year ago that St. George’s resident Mark Jorgensen arrived at Murray Intermountain Medical Center and became the first Utahn with a confirmed case of COVID-19 to be treated in the state .
Intermountain doctor Todd Vento and Jorgensen showed up at a virtual meeting Sunday afternoon to talk about Jorgensen’s birthday and experience with the coronavirus and what doctors have learned about COVID-19 during the months since he was treated. Vento, an infectious disease doctor who treated Jorgensen, said it is “hard to believe” that a year has passed since Jorgensen arrived.
Jorgensen was a passenger on the Diamond Princess cruise ship that became a Petri dish of coronavirus infections while sailing near Japan last year. His wife, Jerri, tested positive for the boat and was taken to a Japanese hospital. Mark Jorgensen was taken home from Japan by the U.S. government and tested positive for the first time on COVID-19 after landing in California.
Days later, Jorgensen was transferred to his home state to be treated at Intermountain Medical Center. Later, Jorgensen was allowed to quarantine at 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 test negative for COVID-19 before leaving isolation. Jorgensen was at home for weeks before CDC changed its direction and left solitary confinement in March 2020.
“I remember that phone call,” Vento said, “calling him … and then one day saying,‘ Hey, you’re free to be out of isolation. ’I remember him saying,‘ Wait, I’m still positive. I said, “It’s true, but now CDC has a new approach.”
“I think the lesson is there, we learn things,” Vento added. “We have to change, we have to adjust. People said we didn’t use masks; that probably made us go back a lot. Now we know the data is amazing for masks, and we have to use them and we have to But you can see when you have these sharp learning curves at first, sometimes people will interpret it as, “Oh, maybe you don’t know what you’re doing.” Well, the reality is, we didn’t really do it. why is that? We had a virus we had never heard of, never seen until December 2019. We had to learn very quickly. “
“I don’t regret leaving at all”
Jorgensen said he believes he took COVID-19 on the flight back to the United States.
“It was all a nightmare,” he recalled, recalling the “battle between CDC, the State Department and the White House” over whether they should even be allowed to return to him and his fellow North Passengers. Americans.
“That plane ride was pretty interesting,” he said. “Everyone was packed on that cargo plane, the 747. I’m sure there was some transmission there.”
Jorgensen said it was a bit “baffling” to see how “fuss” was made about him, because he had no symptoms.
“I felt good the whole 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 themselves at home for 10 days.
Jorgensen said the year since he left solitary confinement has been “quite uneventful.” But he’s not sure he “skated free” of COVID-19 as he once thought.
“I have a memory fog that I’m going through and that I feel is a symptom, and I wonder if that’s part of it,” Jorgensen said. He has also had eye problems that his ophthalmologist is “convinced” he is related to.
Jorgensen said he doesn’t have a coronavirus vaccine yet and wants to “see how it develops” first, but he’ll probably follow his doctor’s advice and get one.
He said he has no regrets about sailing the diamond princess.
“I don’t live life like that,” he said. “I did what I did, and that’s what happened … I don’t regret that anything happened. We had a great time and then we had a little side adventure, and well, it was the that was.And Yes, I definitely plan to take a cruise again.
“Actually, I’m in Costa Rica right now,” he said. “This is our first international trip since all of this. So obviously we don’t let any fear stop us. This is just one of our philosophies in life.”