MURRAY – It had been a year on Sunday since St. George resident Mark Jorgensen arrived at the Intermountain Medical Center in Murray and was the first Utahn with a confirmed COVID-19 case being heard in the state.
Dr. Intermountain’s Todd Vento and Jorgensen appeared in a virtual meeting Sunday afternoon to discuss the anniversary, and about Jorgenen’s experience with the coronavirus and what doctors have learned about COVID-19 in the months since he was treated. Vento, an infectious disease physician who treated Jorgensen, said it is “hard to believe” that it has been a year since Jorgensen arrived.
Jorgensen was a passenger on the Diamond Princess cruise ship that became a petri dish of coronavirus infections while sailing near Japan last year. His wife, Jerri, tested positive on the ship and was taken to a Japanese hospital. Mark Jorgensen was flown home from Japan by the US government and first tested positive for COVID-19 after landing in California.
Days later, Jorgensen was flown to his home state to receive treatment at the Intermountain Medical Center. Jorgensen was later allowed to quarantine at his home with his wife.
He never showed any symptoms of the virus.
Vento explained that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at the time required patients to test negative for COVID-19 before they could leave isolation. Jorgensen was locked in his home for weeks before the CDC changed its guidelines, and he left isolation in March 2020.
“I remember that call,” said Vento, “when I called him … and one day said,” Hey, you’re free to come out of isolation. I remember him saying, ‘Wait, I’m still positive.’ I said, “That’s right, but now the CDC has a new approach.”
“I think the lesson out there is, we learn things,” added Vento. “We have to change, we have to adapt. People said we shouldn’t use masks; that probably brought us back quite a bit. Now we know the data is incredible for masks, and we have to use masks and we have to accept that. You can see that when you have these steep learning curves early on, people sometimes interpret that as, “Oh, maybe you don’t know what you’re doing.” Well, the reality is we really didn’t. And why is that? We had a virus that we had never heard of, never seen until December 2019. We had to learn very quickly. ”
‘I don’t regret it at all’
Jorgensen said he believes he caught COVID-19 on the flight back to the United States.
“ That whole thing was a nightmare, ” he recalled, recalling the “ battle between the CDC, the State Department and the White House ” over whether he and his fellow American passengers should be bounced back at all.
“That return trip by plane was quite interesting,” he said. “Everyone was caught in this cargo plane, 747. I’m sure a transmission took place there.”
Jorgensen said it was a bit “puzzling” to see “a fuss” being made about him because he had no symptoms.
“I felt fine all the time,” he said, but he understands that “people were learning” about the virus and “what all this was.”
Today, asymptomatic COVID-19 patients are generally advised to isolate at home for 10 days.
Jorgensen said the year since he left isolation has been “pretty quiet.” But he’s not sure if he’s “free skating” COVID-19 as he once thought.
“I have a memory fog going on and I hear a symptom of it, and I wonder if that’s part of it,” Jorgensen said. He also has problems with his eyes that his ophthalmologist is “convinced” to be related.
Jorgensen said he hasn’t had a vaccine against the coronavirus yet and wants to “see how it turns out,” but will likely follow his doctor’s advice and eventually get one.
He said he does not regret sailing with the Diamond Princess.
“I don’t live like that,” he said. “I did what I did, and this is what happened … I don’t regret going at all. We had a great time, and then we had a little side adventure, and okay, it was what it was And yes, I definitely plan to cruise again.
“I’m actually in Costa Rica now,” he said. “This is our first international trip since all this. Of course we will not let any fear hold us back. That’s just our philosophy of life.”