WINCHESTER —On March 19, a handful of people gathered at the North Cameron Street headquarters of Literacy Volunteers Winchester Area to throw a surprise birthday party for the organization’s executive director, Mark Sieffert.
It was a decision they soon came to regret.
Someone in the group — no one really knows who — was unknowingly carrying the COVID-19 coronavirus. A few days later, six of the 10 people who attended the party, including Sieffert, were sick and had transmitted the virus to others.
Fortunately, the original six have since recovered and completed their at-home quarantines. Unfortunately, many of their friends and loved ones are still battling the virus.
‘We thought the virus was still weeks away’
On March 19, the full extent of the COVID-19 threat was underestimated by many people in the Northern Shenandoah Valley. The Lord Fairfax Health District didn’t report its first confirmed local case for two more days, and Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s order that gatherings be limited to 10 people or less was still five days away.
Literacy Volunteers Winchester Area had already closed its office temporarily in accordance with the state of emergency that Northam declared on March 12, but Sieffert assumed it would be OK to hold a staff meeting if a limited number of personnel did a thorough cleaning of the facilities beforehand and everyone in attendance refrained from hugs and handshakes.
“Back in those days — it seems like ancient history now — we thought the virus was still weeks away,” Sieffert said. “I remember thinking to myself, ‘Oh, there’s a small chance that something could happen,’ but nobody in Winchester that we knew about had had any experience [with the virus] at that point.”
Once Sieffert approved the staff meeting, his coworkers secretly turned it into a surprise party for their boss, who had turned 43 four days earlier.
Among the 10 attendees were Literacy Volunteers Winchester Area staff members Rebecca Gibson and Katterine Ruiz Soto.
A few days later, Gibson started feeling sick. Ruiz Soto, Sieffert and three other people from the party also came down with symptoms including coughs, sore throats, body pains, headaches and an inability to taste food.
“When I started to get a fever, I suspected [COVID-19] but really couldn’t imagine where I had gotten it,” said Gibson, the 53-year-old administrative and development coordinator for Literacy Volunteers Winchester Area.
“We didn’t believe it could possibly be the coronavirus at first,” Sieffert said, “but three days in, when we all had the symptoms and somebody lost their sense of smell, we were like, ‘Uh oh.'”
It would still be a few days before anyone knew for sure they had contracted COVID-19. Due to a shortage of testing kits, Sieffert said they had to “make a compelling case” before local health officials agreed to swab them for the virus.
Ruiz Soto, a 35-year-old naturalized citizen of the United States who came to this country from Colombia, was the first to be tested. The U.S. Department of Justice-accredited legal representative for Literacy Volunteers Winchester area recalled her initial reaction once she received the diagnosis.
“I was anxious,” she said. “I told my husband I wanted to leave the country, go home and be with my mother. I just wanted to quit and go home.”
‘It is very scary’
“It still blows my mind that we, as a group, were the first people I knew of in Winchester to get it,” Gibson said.
They wouldn’t be the last. As of Monday afternoon, the Virginia Department of Health reported a total of 66 COVID-19 cases in the Lord Fairfax Health District — 13 in Winchester, 31 in Frederick County, 13 in Shenandoah County, five in Warren County, two in Clarke County and two in Page County.
Gibson said she suspects even more people have the coronavirus than reported because the severity of COVID-19 symptoms vary from person to person. No one who attended the Literacy Volunteers party required hospitalization, but a few people who later came in contact with them did. At the other end of the spectrum, Gibson said her two college-age children had only mild symptoms for two days and then recovered.
“They never had a fever,” she said. “There’s such a range for all of us — how it hit you, how hard it hit you.”
The only common symptom experienced by each of the infected people was fear.
“Even if you’re one of those people who just gets a headache for two days, during those two days, you don’t know what’s going to happen,” Gibson said. “It is very scary. For you and your family members to not know what the next day will bring — I’ve never experienced anything like that.”
Sieffert said being in his 40s and in general good health gave him a bit of assurance that he would make a full recovery, but that didn’t entirely alleviate his fear.
“What really scared me was knowing that friends, or family members of friends or colleagues, were at greater risk than we were,” he said. “If I had any role to play in spreading it to people who are vulnerable, that’s what keeps me awake at night.”
‘It’s just not worth it’
Now that Sieffert, Gibson and Ruiz Soto have recovered, health officials suspect the three have developed a degree of immunity from COVID-19.
“We have superpowers,” Gibson said with a laugh before adding she wants to use her immunity to assist others. “I’m picking up groceries for my neighbors, trying to help out whoever I can.”
“We’re trying to find ways to pay it forward,” Sieffert said. “Volunteers will play an increasingly important role in keeping every community healthy and well-fed.”
Ruiz Soto said she stands as testament to the virus’ survivability and cautions anyone who contracts COVID-19 “not to panic.”
Sieffert said he and his staff agreed to go public with their conditions so others would understand the importance of social distancing, hand washing and other protective measures to halt the spread of the coronavirus.
“Going out and doing something that’s non-essential is not worth jeopardizing the health of your coworkers, the elderly, the immunocompromised,” Sieffert said. “It’s just not worth it.”
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