"We actually had our first mock drills in February of 2020." 

The dates remain vivid for AHN St. Vincent President, Dr. Chris Clark.

He says, "It was on March 20 of 2020 that we actually put our emergency operations plan into place."

And it prompted all the preps to care for any COVID positive patients.

Clark adds, "We had separate areas for waiting, for diagnostic purposes, for treatment and so forth."

Dr. Clark says there's currently one COVID unit after a total of four over the past year.

At UPMC Hamot the first COVID 19 surge was between May and June and then the big one started in November, lasting into December, even January, and at the height of the pandemic here, there were 5 COVID units."

Director of Operations at UPMC Hamot, Dr. Emily Shears, says "Specimen collection at the beginning was very difficult in terms of what labs will run these specimens."

Shears also said PPE was a priority too, adding, "We were tracking mask usage and we went down to conservation efforts pretty quickly because we didn't know what the future held." 

Thinking out of the box was also being done at LECOM. 

Dr. James Lin, says, "So, I went international to try to source the PPE directly." 

Dr. Lin is the President of the LECOM Institute for Successful Aging. He says he worked with local companies to get PPE shipments *to LECOM. 

That was after making other early, bold moves to keep the elderly and senior citizens at LECOM, the most vulnerable people, safe.

Lin says, "We're the first nursing home in the community to actually stop visitations, and with screening protocols in place." 

As all the local hospitals started the process of testing people the virus and spending money on modifications.

It was an early Christmas present that brought the most promise during the pandemic...the arrival of the COVID 19 vaccine.

Clark says, "It really introduced, injected us with a significant amount of hope in all of us, here."