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Ground Zero: Where COVID-19 Landed in the United States

What happened at a Kirkland, Wash., Nursing Home.

60 Minutes had one of their stories on the events surrounding the discovery of the coronavirus here in the United States when cases overwhelmed a nursing facility in Kirkland, Wash. 

What was particularly irksome is that when the nursing facility was expecting a team of federal health officials to come to the rescue, what happened was that a team of federal regulators showed up instead to investigate the facility. Rather than helping to treat patients and care for those at the home, they were interviewing staff, taking them away from their nursing duties, when they already were down many staff due to infections. 

It is not the type of "help" one expects when you are ground zero!

Eric Holdeman is a contributing writer for Emergency Management magazine and is the former director of the King County, Wash., Office of Emergency Management.