It can work; the combination of sterilizing, washing hands, distancing and masking can really work.

Betsey Hyde

 

TEMPLE — After months of adamantly practicing the standard COVID-19 precautionary measures – face coverings, social distancing and sanitation – the Hyde family let down their guard for a small birthday celebration of eight people. They gathered around the kitchen table, ate soup and cake and carved pumpkins for Halloween.

All but one of the family members left that Saturday evening, Oct. 24, without contracting COVID-19.

David Hyde is a physician at the Togus Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Augusta and also fills in at Franklin Memorial Hospital (FMH) in Farmington. Although he was showing no symptoms that Saturday, he was already infected from exposure at FMH, determined later that week by contact tracers at Maine’s Center for Disease Control (CDC).

“They [CDC] said that it’s the 48 hours prior to coming down with symptoms that you are very contagious,” his wife, Betsey Hyde said in a phone interview.

Over the weekend, the Hydes went grocery shopping and attended their church which caps capacity at 35 people during the pandemic and requires families to sit six feet apart.

“David was highly contagious when we were at church. We did not know that, but no one there, the 35 people that were there, no one contracted it,” Betsey said. “And we were at the store that weekend and the CDC hasn’t seen any spread from us being there and of course, we used masks and we were distanced.” 

The Hydes’ daughter-in-law also dropped by the house briefly that weekend.

“She only interacted with David for probably 20 minutes, and she carried COVID back to our son,” Betsey said. 

On Monday, Betsey’s two sons who attend the University of Maine in Orono paid a visit and spent the afternoon helping their parents stack wood pellets in the barn. Betsey’s sons returned to Orono Monday night and woke up Tuesday morning to a text stating they had been exposed to COVID-19 and were now in mandatory quarantine.

David works nights at Togus and went into work on Monday feeling achy and sneezing. He assumed the soreness was from the five tons of pellets he had just stacked and that his allergies were flaring up from the dusty barn.

He took some Claritin and went through the hospital’s automated screening before starting his shift without a single thought that he could have contracted COVID-19.

“Maybe today it would’ve crossed his mind because we have an outbreak in Franklin County,” Betsey said. “But on Oct. 27, we still were in this kind of lull where it seemed like we were relatively keeping things under wraps.” 

According to the Maine CDC, Franklin County had a daily average of 7 new cases of COVID-19 on Fri. Nov. 20, compared to 0.4 average on Tues., Oct. 27.

The screening flagged David for these symptoms and he underwent a second, in-person screening with a nurse who cleared him after he explained his afternoon activity. It was a slow night at the hospital and David took a nap, only to wake up at 3 a.m. with a fever.

David immediately went down to the Emergency Room for a rapid coronavirus test and by 6 a.m., received confirmation that he had contracted COVID-19.

With help from the CDC, the Hydes contacted the majority of people exposed to David over the weekend before working hours on Tuesday morning.

“One member of the family who had been exposed was literally in the drive-thru at McDonald’s on his way to work and didn’t go; turned around because he got the phone call that morning from Dave,” Betsey said.

The Hydes’ youngest daughter, 16-year-old Anna had attended school at the Foster Tech Center in Farmington on Monday, but out of a combination of luck and safe COVID-19 practices, did not further spread the coronavirus.

“What I thought was amazing is they have so many cameras in the school,” Betsey said. “They were able to monitor her, going through her pattern of classes and lunch and everything that day, this makes it sound like Big Brother, but it is a school.” 

Through interviews and Regional School Unit 9 surveillance, the CDC determined that 15 people were considered close contacts to Anna, none of whom contracted the coronavirus. Anna wore her mask for the entirety of the school day, practiced social distancing and sterilized her hands upon entering and leaving classrooms.

There were no cases at Togus traced back to David and the Hydes attributed both Togus’ and Franklin Memorial Hospital’s protocols as a major preventer for further spread.

David was just waking up from an afternoon nap before his night shift at Togus and drowsily listed off the Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) that he wears at both FMH and Togus.

For presumed non-COVID-19 infected patients, David wears a surgical mask, gloves and goggles. For presumed COVID-19 infected patients, he is covered head to toe in PPE with shoe coverings, a gown, an m95 face mask and a face shield.

Remarkably, the infection was truly a family affair. The coronavirus that David contracted from FMH, later to be deemed an outbreak, was contained within his family.

“What the CDC is seeing is that our case did not go beyond our family, and I credit it with that rapid test and contact tracing and having masked over the weekend in public places,” Betsey said.

Everyone in the family has recovered and is no longer contagious, but Betsey said there are lingering symptoms and started to cough over the phone. Betsey and her children currently have no taste and limited smell while David still experiences shortness of breath. 

During the height of sickness, Betsey described symptoms that far surpassed those she’s experienced with influenza.

“For me, my fever was higher than when I’ve had influenza and the pain I experienced, the body aches, I literally felt like my teeth were going to fall out of my head. So painful,” Betsey almost whispered into the phone.

Once the Hyde family recovered, Betsey wrote her story on Facebook hoping to convey the impact that COVID-19 practices can have on further outbreaks.

“It can work; the combination of sterilizing, washing hands, distancing and masking can really work,” she said. “Again, not perfectly infallible, but very helpful.” 

 

 

 

 

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