SCRANTON, Pa. — It is a grim anniversary: one year ago this month, COVID-19 cases were confirmed in Pennsylvania.
The pandemic led to a state-wide shutdown.
Health care professionals said they have learned a lot about COVID-19 in that time.
“We were the worst-performing country on the planet which is a lot to say because we are the country that spends more amount of money than any other country when it comes to healthcare, but still we performed the worst," said Dr. Jignesth Sheth, chief of medicine for The Wright Center for Community Health.
Like so many other healthcare professionals, Dr. Sheth has been on the front lines of this crisis: learning more and more about the virus, what worked to battle it and what did not.
He said the past year has brought many challenges and revealed serious problems in healthcare and government agencies, but he added it also showed how advanced the country was when it came to testing and vaccines.
“I think federal funds should have gone into those companies, helping with production, and I don’t think that happened, and so there was a severe shortage up until November, December of getting that testing.”
Dr. Sheth said there’s still so much to learn and do when it comes to this health crisis: especially with new variants emerging, and he says people need to remember to continue wearing masks: preferably N95 masks or two masks at once and to get vaccinated.
He said the vaccine will not protect people from getting or spreading COVID-19, but instead, those vaccines are designed to keep them from getting seriously ill and dying.
“The problem is we have patients who still don’t wear masks, and we have people who refuse to wear a mask."
Another major issue: PPE or personal protective equipment.
Dr. Sheth said almost all of it is made in China, and that is a serious issue that needs to be changed moving forward.