Public Health Lab
COVID-19 Stories: Sara
“I’m Sara, and I’m currently the interim division director of the Public Health Laboratory. I have been here 13 years, and was assistant division director during the pandemic.
“I was reflecting on the term ‘lockdown,’ because I think it's a little ironic for us. As the world was locking down, we were as busy as we'd ever been. While everybody else was adjusting to life at home, we were here 12-plus hours a day. So, it never felt like a lockdown to me.
“At the same time, it was a blur. There are parts of the pandemic I don't remember at all; the whole time just clumps together. It was like trying to function with a waterfall falling on your head and people asking you to count the drops that were falling on you constantly. Things just kept coming and coming and coming.
“I grieved a lot … I knew during that time that the world was never going to be the same. I felt that really strongly, really early on. And there was also a lot of questioning, right? For a lot of us, this is what we spent our whole careers preparing for, and it was very odd to actually see ourselves in the position of an actual pandemic, but then to have it not be like the movies.
“We got so much pressure, so much being asked of us with little resources, little time, not enough people, all of that. I wish the public knew how much the public health community cared and how much the public health community really put everybody else's life ahead of their own. We were here from the beginning, watching this, and we stayed, and we fought for you. Despite it all, we really had the public’s best health in mind. We all do.
“I worried for my kids … I didn't even see them. I was so thankful that they were older at the time, so they could read, they were sent home with their Chromebooks, they could do school, so I was thankful for that. I was thankful that my husband could be home, and that he was so supportive and just took care of everything for months, while I wasn't there.
“I still had a lot of worrying, a lot of guilt about them. And then just uncertainty of where this was all going. ‘How is this going to progress? How is this going to end?’ I was trying to process it as a scientist, but then also as a human being living through this pandemic with everybody else.
“Honestly, things don't even feel normal now. It also feels very much that things could change on a dime, and we could be thrown right back to where we were. I don't know if this is just me processing my trauma, or if it's really this way, but I have a constant feeling of just ... abnormal.
“There are a lot of stories in the lab of how staff were able to put stuff together quickly. You know, one day we had, like, three samples come in, and the next day it was 500, and the way the lab was able to rally and work together and form teams so quickly is amazing. I met a lot of really great people, because so many people came in and helped. I think the lab story is so important to tell. We have such a unique perspective.
“We tested the first positive case in Minnesota. We were holding meetings preparing for this in January. The staff here are so dedicated. I can't speak more highly of them.”
PHL COVID-19 Stories is a series about the experiences of Public Health Lab employees during the COVID-19 pandemic.