Interviews

CHARLOTTE - March 17, 2020: one year ago today, Governor Cooper banned sit-down service at bars and restaurants.  It was one in a series of steps that would abruptly and completely change life as we knew it.  Three days earlier, Cooper called for all K-12 schools in the state to suspend in-person instruction for at least two weeks and banned gatherings of more than 100 people.  Just one week later, on March 24, Mecklenburg County would impose a stay-at-home order requiring the closure of all but essential businesses and prohibiting gatherings of over ten people. A full year later, the United States has seen 29.2 million cases of COVID-19 and over half a million deaths related to the virus.  North Carolina alone has had 881 K cases and 11,577 deaths as of March 10, 2021.  Here, we look b...

MINT HILL, NC - 2020 has been an unprecedented year for everyone, and nowhere is that more obvious than in the world of healthcare.  As 2020 draws to a close, I had the unique opportunity to talk with leadership and first responders from Novant Health Mint Hill Medical Center to learn more about the year behind the mask. Confronting COVID: Uncertainty and Constant Change In March of 2020, when COVID first began spreading in the United States, it’s not an exaggeration to say that everything changed overnight.  During what we now see as the “first wave,” the only constant for the staff at Mint Hill Medical Center was change. “It was organized chaos,” says Dana Price, Nurse Manager, Specialty Care Unit, who compares the constant influx of new information to attempting to drink f...