‘A sprint and a marathon at the same time’: Public health care workers describe early pandemic challenges

Editor’s note: Five years ago this week, the suburbs — and much of the world — shut down as COVID-19 spread through our communities, a pandemic that would ultimately claim the lives of nearly 37,000 Illinoisans and 1.1 million Americans. Beginning today, and over the next several weeks as part of an occasional series, we'll be sharing the stories of fellow suburbanites who experienced the pandemic on the frontlines, from the teacher who adapted lessons to remote learning, to a restaurant owner who reinvented a way of doing business, to first responders who put themselves at risk of infection daily to serve and protect.

Well before the first U.S. case of coronavirus was confirmed on Jan. 20, 2020, the collective radar of those at the Lake County Health Department involved in preventing and controlling infectious diseases was on high alert.

Though trained to deal with a variety of circumstances, it quickly became apparent the snowballing situation was unlike anything Patti Corn, emergency response coordinator, or Sara Zamor, associate director of prevention, or their colleagues had faced.

The public health care professionals handled multiple shifting tasks with responsibilities expanding to whatever role was needed as the pandemic unfolded five years ago. They and others would spend 12 to 14 hours nearly every day for months, delivering support and information, protective equipment and vaccinations to a scared, confused and sometimes angry public.

Meeting daily, a planning group would discuss logistics, finance, public information and other aspects of what needed to be addressed the next day and for the months ahead.

“It was a sprint and a marathon all at the same time,” said Zamor, who joined the department in 2004, moving from community health specialist to program coordinator to her current position in 2018.

“As exhausting as the hours were, there was such a strong sense of shared purpose during that time that really helped fuel everyone,” she added.

Five years later, the pandemic experience remains unforgettable, though sometimes it seems like a long ago blur. The takeaway is that all were affected, lives changed and the time shaped who we are now.

“Whether we knew someone hospitalized or succumbed to it, quarantined, sick and very scared to have it, not being able to socialize, go to school, working remote, not able to buy even the basic supplies, our lives were impacted,” Corn explained.

Her initial focus was locating and distributing protective personal equipment and serving as liaison to the emergency operations center, which met daily for the first year.

By mid-January 2020, “you could not buy a case of N95s (masks),” and because of the limited number and availability, testing for the virus was “horrifically hard” before widespread testing became available, Corn said.

When vaccines arrived in December 2020, Corn became the lead planner to distribute them to health care providers and hospitals and administer doses at sites throughout the county, including a drive-through operation at the Lake County Fairgrounds’ expo hall in Grayslake.

“For about eight months, I worked out of my car,” she said. “Our efforts were all over.”

Corn said the goal of a pandemic is to vaccinate 80% of the population. By November 2021, 2 million doses of vaccine had been administered at four large sites and 400 pop-up sites requested by organizations and communities, she noted.

At the onset of the pandemic, Zamor was operations chief of the public health emergency operations center and comanaged added staff as case investigators and contact tracers.

“That was a role I had received training for prior to (the) pandemic beginning but I didn’t ever imagine that we would face the type of public health pandemic that COVID-19 became,” she said.

A flood of calls was expected when vaccinations became available. But another 20 staffers had to be added to handle the actual volume of 1,000 or more a day.

“The number of calls was really astounding,” Zamor recalled. “During my time with the case investigators and call center, I heard some truly heartbreaking stories of how COVID-19 was impacting our residents and their families.

“I'm grateful that we were part of something during that time that really made a positive difference in some people’s lives,” she added. “I’m proud of what we accomplished — it was really monumental.”

Though tough and taxing, the extraordinary circumstances also benefited the public health system.

“We’re prepared, we learned so much from that,” Zamor said. “We are watching measles, we are watching avian flu. We’re prepared for that.”