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enterprise THE DAVIS
SUNDAY, APRIL 19, 2020
Living through COVID-19 Officials County’s first patient details chaotic days BY CALEB HAMPTON Enterprise staff writer Davis resident Marilyn Stebbins had been hospitalized for three days when physicians at the UC Davis Medical Center informed her on March 4 that she was positive for COVID-19. Two days later, Yolo County public health officer Dr. Ron Chapman held a press conference announcing her as the county’s first confirmed case. After eight days in the intensive care unit, Stebbins was discharged from the hospital. She has since completed her recovery while in quarantine at her home in Davis. On Thursday, Stebbins’ account of her illness and recovery was published by UC San Francisco School of Pharmacy, where Stebbins works as a clinical pharmacist and faculty member. The firsthand account offers a window into her experience with the virus and her encounters with the health care system. It raises questions about Yolo County’s handling of its first coronavirus case.
From Idaho to the ICU “Life was normal for me as I planned a short ski vacation at the end of February,” Stebbins wrote. “I’m a healthy, fit, 58-year-old woman who enjoys distance trail running, weekly
ELIZABETH FALL, THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA/COURTESY PHOTO
Davis resident Marilyn Stebbins was Yolo County’s first confirmed case of COVID-19. circuit training and Pilates.” Before the ski trip she ran a 30-kilometer trail race. She planned to run a 50K a few weeks later. Before leaving for her trip, Stebbins had no known exposure to anyone with a confirmed case of COVID-19. On Feb. 22, she had some slight cold symptoms which she treated with zinc and elderberry syrup. California’s statewide shelter-in-place order was still nearly a month away. On Feb. 23, Stebbins and her husband Charlie flew from Sacramento to Spokane, Wash., via San Diego. They waited an hourand-a-half in the Spokane airport for her brother-in-law, Norbert Chu. The three of them rented a car and drove to their family vacation home in Sandpoint, Idaho. Stebbins skied for five to six hours at Schweitzer Mountain Resort each of the next two days. “While I felt fatigued, it was
more muscle fatigue from overuse and exertion,” Stebbins wrote. Throughout her stay in Idaho, Stebbins was in close contact with her husband and brother-in-law, she said. On the afternoon of Feb. 26, the last day of skiing, Stebbins told her husband and brotherin-law that her lungs were burning a little. “I chalked it up to the cold air and altitude, and to our intense skiing,” Stebbins wrote. She had no appetite that night, which she said was unusual. On the way to the Spokane airport early the next morning, Stebbins was hit with a bout of urgent diarrhea and nausea. “I thought I might have food poisoning,” she wrote. The diarrhea continued throughout her trip back to Davis and into the next day. She had a headache but no fever or vomiting. On Thursday, Feb. 27, Stebbins went to her local nail salon for a manicure. “My manicurist always wears a mask,” she wrote.
crack down on crowds
“I did not. I was not coughing at this time.” The following day, Stebbins woke with chills and body aches. She had developed a dry cough and her lungs burned when she took a deep breath. She thought she might have the flu. Her primary-care physician at UC Davis Health asked if she had traveled to China or Europe or had contact with anyone known to have coronavirus. Stebbins said she hadn't, but added that she had traveled by air within the past week. Her doctor advised her to get a chest X-ray at her local emergency department. At the Sutter Davis Hospital ED, Stebbins was asked the same screening questions and gave the same answers. “Neither the intake staff members in the ED nor the physician assistant whom I ultimately saw were wearing personal protective equipment,” she wrote. The chest X-ray showed multifocal pneumonia. Her vital signs were stable. She was prescribed a 10-day course of amoxicillin and a five-day course of azithromycin. She was given a mask, told to stay away from people until she felt better, and advised to make an appointment with her physician within the next week as her pneumonia was extensive. She tested negative for influenza. Over the weekend, her symptoms worsened. “When I experienced shortness of breath, I coughed and became very weak and nauseated,” Stebbins wrote. “I sounded terrible, and I felt
BY LAUREN KEENE Enterprise staff writer Stay at home, people. If you must go out, keep your distance already. That’s the message the Davis Police Department — and law-enforcement agencies countywide — issued Friday afternoon after getting slammed with complaints about social-distancing violations in recent days. “We’re receiving more complaints about people using playground equipment, tennis courts, basketball courts, and not adequately spacing when riding or walking on greenbelts,” creating potential coronavirus breeding grounds, Police Chief Darren Pytel said. In some cases, people have ripped down yellow caution tape in order to use the blocked-off facilities, while more middle- and high-school aged kids are grouping up in parks. Between emails and calls to dispatchers, the complaints have numbered a dozen or more per day, with some demanding stronger enforcement action for the rule breakers, Pytel said. This week’s springlike weather was the likely culprit, and “we know that
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Drug trial shows early promise for treating coronavirus
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BY CALEB HAMPTON Enterprise staff writer
St. John’s ‘working around the clock’ to contain outbreak BY ANNE TERNUS-BELLAMY Enterprise staff writer Every hour of every day is focused on stopping the coronavirus outbreak from spreading at the St. John’s Retirement Village in Woodland, according to St. John’s chief executive officer. “We have never encountered an ‘enemy’ like COVID-19, and St. John’s staff is working around the clock to contain this virus,” CEO Sean Beloud said in a message posted to the community’s website on Friday. As of Friday, 24 residents and
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Clinicians at UC Davis Health and other hospitals in the U.S., Europe, Canada and Japan, who are conducting the first trial of the antiviral therapy remdesivir to treat COVID19, are seeing early signs of promise. “Nearly two-thirds of severely ill patients hospitalized with COVID-19 who received remdesivir on a compassionate-use basis improved, with no new concerns about safety reported during the short clinical study,” UC Davis Health announced Thursday in a press release. Remdesivir is a broad-spectrum antiviral that has been tested in humans with Ebola and in animals
31 staff members in St. John’s skilled nursing facility — the Stollwood Convalescent Hospital — have tested positive for the virus, according to the state Department of Public Health. Of the 261 nursing facilities in the state with at least one case of COVID-19, only four have more affected staff members than St. John’s. When the county first announced an outbreak at a Yolo County nursing facility on
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St. John’s Retirement Village is home to about 150 residents living in 13 individual cottages, 14 apartments, 32 personal-care unit apartments, 32 memory-care units and the 48-bed Stollwood skilled nursing facility.
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