WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — There are a few key dates on the COVID-19 timeline:
- March 11th: The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic.
- March 27th: Governor Roy Cooper issued a stay at home order.
- June 26th - The statewide mask mandate began.
Throughout those milestones and for the past eight months, healthcare workers on the frontlines have faced the virus head on. WFMY News 2's Maddie Gardner reached back out to a Winston-Salem nurse to see how she is 242 days after they first spoke.
"We're all exhausted but we're okay," Savannah Hayes said eight months ago, on March 26, 2020.
Just days into the coronavirus outbreak in the Triad, neither she nor her coworkers at Novant Health knew what was in store. She spoke to WFMY News 2 on the start of her first week off since the pandemic began.
"I knew that we were going to be in it for the long-haul this is not something that's going to go away until there's an effective treatment on effective vaccine," Hayes said.
Hayes is now in a new role but spent the first part of the pandemic at Novant Health's screening centers. She said even though that time seems like ages ago.
"COVID is still here," she said.
For Hayes, the pandemic has been a marathon, running for so long that at this point, it's hard to differentiate between work and home life.
"Learning to shut that COVID mindset off at certain times of the day, you stay in that moment so often, especially when you work somewhere like a screening site, so it's difficult when you come home and you just feel like you need to continue to protect yourself constantly even at home when you should be able to relax," Hayes said.
So much has changed since we first met Hayes eight months ago, but her plea to the public, to help frontline workers fight the virus, has not. She asked you to do what you know slows the spread of the virus: wear a mask, wash your hands and social distance.