MURRAY – A year ago, on Sunday, St. George’s resident Mark Jorgensen arrived at Murray Intermountain Medical Center and became the first Utahn with a confirmed COVID-19 case to be treated in the state.
Dr. Todd Vento and Jorgensen from Intermountain appeared in a virtual meeting Sunday afternoon to discuss Jorgensen’s birthday and experience with coronavirus and what doctors learned about COVID-19 in the months since he was treated. Vento, an infectious disease doctor who treated Jorgensen, said it was “hard to believe” that a year had passed 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 driven home from Japan by the US government and tested positive for COVID-19 for the first time after landing in California.
Days later, Jorgensen was flown to his home state to be treated at the Intermountain Medical Center. Jorgensen was later allowed to be quarantined at home with his wife.
He never had symptoms of the virus.
Vento explained that at the time, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention required patients to test negative for COVID-19 before they could leave isolation. Jorgensen was housed at his home for weeks before the CDC changed its direction and left solitary confinement in March 2020.
“I remember that phone,” Vento said, “calling him … and then one day saying, ‘Hey, you’re free not to be isolated.’ I remember he said, “Wait, I’m still positive.” I said, “That’s right, but now the CDC has a new approach.”
“I think the lesson is, we learn things,” Vento added. “We have to change, we have to adapt. People said not to use masks; that probably took us a long way. Now we know that data is incredible for masks and we have to use masks and we have to accept that. But you can see when you have these steep learning curves at the beginning, sometimes people will interpret that as “Oh, maybe you don’t know what you’re doing.” Well, the reality is, I 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 have no regrets that I went”
Jorgensen said he believes he caught COVID-19 on the flight back to the United States.
“The 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 American colleagues should be allowed to go right back.
“The plane ride back was quite interesting,” he said. “Everyone was packed in this cargo plane, 747. I’m sure there was a transmission there.”
Jorgensen said it was a bit “puzzling” to see the “agitation” made about him because he had no symptoms.
“I felt really good all the time,” he said, but he understood that “people are learning” about the virus and “what that means.”
Today, asymptomatic patients with COVID-19 are generally advised to isolate themselves at home for 10 days.
Jorgensen said the year he left solitary confinement was “quite uneventful.” But it is not certain that he “skated” COVID-19 as he once thought.
“I have a memory fog that happens that I hear is a symptom of it and I wonder if that’s part of it,” Jorgensen said. He also had eye problems that his ophthalmologist is “convinced” that he is related.
Jorgensen said he has not yet had a coronavirus vaccine and wants to “see how it develops” first, but will probably follow his doctor’s advice and eventually receive one.
He said he did not regret sailing the Diamond Princess.
“I don’t live life like that,” he said. “I did what I did and that’s what happened … I don’t regret at all that I went. We felt really good and had a little side adventure after that, and OK, that was it. And yes, I definitely plan to take a cruise again.
“I’m actually in Costa Rica right now,” he said. “This is our first international trip of all this. So obviously we don’t let any fear stop us. This is just the kind of philosophy we have in life.”