COVID Two Years In: Local doctors reflect on lessons learned during pandemic

Today, fewer than a thousand new COVID cases were reported by the state. It's the lowest number we've seen since July.

Two years ago, when the first cases were reported in North Carolina, it would’ve been difficult to imagine thinking that just over 900 new cases a day was a good indicator.

In the two years time since the first COVID case here in our state, there have been more than 2.5 million cases reported among North Carolinians and more than 22,500 people in our state have died from the virus.

Doctors say our current climate and case count is something they didn't imagine still being a topic of conversation now.

"I was thinking it would be months," said Dr. David Wohl, an infectious disease specialist at UNC. "I didn't think was gonna be years."

"It's been very discouraging that we're still at this point dealing with it," echoed Dr. Trista Reid, also with UNC.

So much has changed since those early days when there were empty toilet paper shelves and uncertainities surrounding how the virus was being transmitted. The original strain of the virus from Wuhan is extinct, actually. Omicron remains the most prevalent in North Carolina, according to the latest DHHS surveillance report.

In two years, scientists have created a vaccine made available to millions and testing kits have become accessible to all.

"We have tests made out of basically pieces of plastic in our homes that can tell us in 15 minutes whether or not we're infected with good accuracy," said Wohl. "It's remarkable. They're being mailed to us on demand."

These medical professionals say the public health crisis has highlighted how critical communication and outreach are.

"I think one thing that we've learned is that we have to be really careful and thoughtful with our messaging and with our words," Wohl said.

It’s also changed the frequency of some procedures, Reid told us. Her team at UNC oversees putting people on ECMO machines. Before COVID, they’d perform this procedure 25 to 30 times a year. Now – hundreds.

"Just having to go through that for two years straight and then having a lot of patients die, all of that very much contributes to burnout."

Wohl feels the entire medical community has a much better understanding of the virus now than they did at the beginning.

"We've gotten a sense of surges," he told WRAL. "We know that things get worse, they peak, and then they get better for time. I think that's where we are now."

As for the future, though, neither are willing to make predictions, considering they didn't think we'd be in this boat now.

"It's hard to predict two weeks in two months from now, let alone two years from now," said Wohl.

Both doctors, however, think COVID will be around but hope the consequences of getting infected aren’t nearly as severe as what we’ve seen these first two years.