MIDLAND, Texas — March 19, 2020 is a day this community will never forget.
"It gives me chills thinking about it," Erin Bailey, Midland public information officer, said.
Kit Bredimus, Midland Memorial Hospital chief nursing officer, said he remembers all the details.
"I remember his name, his history, his background," Bredimus said. "It was just that deep sigh, like hmmm okay, it's real, it's here and now it's time to act."
It has been 365 days since West Texans learned of the first positive COVID-19 case in our backyard.
Today, we're looking back with a whole new perspective from the depths of that day, starting with the hospital finding out that morning.
"It really did send shock waves through the hospital, through the community because now it's real, it's here, it's in our backyard and now we have to put our preparation into plans and actually start doing this," Bredimus said.
Then the city publicized it.
"I was so nervous," Bailey said. "You get a certain release, it's stuff you're sending. This is the start of Lord knows what's to come to Midland."
Local leaders were expecting it and the hospital isolated this patient like they were expecting it, but it didn't make reporting it any easier to swallow.
Everyone was forced to learn a new work routine.
"Almost every other aspect of my job stopped and everything was directed towards COVID," Bailey said.
Hospital operations were completely turned upside down.
"It changed the way that we delivered food, the way that we cleaned the rooms," Bredimus said. "I mean everything changed with this pandemic, so we had to learn new modalities. We had to change our staffing models. We had to learn new relationships with our community providers, our chain supply stuff. It really turned everything on its head."
With all this learning, came loss too. The first COVID-related death in the Basin came later that same day.
"I remember that call vividly in my mind," Bailey said. "Getting it from our health department director, Whitney, and then the hospital, and we were on a three way phone call with myself, the health department and the hospital."
Our community has persevered through a lot. We've learned a lot, and looking forward, there's a lot of hope in store.
"We're so close we can taste it," Bredimus said. "It's palpable, we're almost there, to where we can start to get back to some resemblance of normalcy."
Bredimus emphasized that we still have work to do though. He says a lot more of the Midland population needs to be vaccinated, and that there are a lot of other steps and strides that have to be made before we're out of the woods.