What’s the coronavirus like? Penn State student opens up about experiences, problems as positive case
Caela Camazine’s voice cracked when asked what she’s missed most since a self-imposed quarantine, one she took up about two weeks ago despite only testing positive for the coronavirus Wednesday.
The 23-year-old State College native just wants to hug her dad.
“I’m very close to my dad, and I haven’t given my dad a hug in like two or three weeks,” Camazine said before a brief pause. “And that’s been challenging for me through all of this. I just want to see my dad and give him a hug and give my mom a hug and just kind of feel the reassurance of all that.”
Camazine, whose symptoms have been relatively mild, recently spoke to the Centre Daily Times over the phone to reassure locals that not every case of the coronavirus is deadly — about 12% of preliminary U.S. cases required hospitalization, per a journal from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — while outlining her personal experience with the coronavirus, along with the country’s shortcomings in testing, traveling and more.
For now, Camazine is just trying to wait out the coronavirus with her boyfriend — who also tested positive — by self-isolating in his downtown State College home with her adopted year-old dog, Frida. The Penn State senior still has online classes every Tuesday and Thursday, she’s burying her nose in news articles and books (Paul Krugman’s “Arguing with Zombies”), and she’s occasionally bingeing on TV shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm.
The brown-haired photojournalism major is also continually updating and compiling a list of the symptoms and outcomes of the 22 others she vacationed with in Innsbruck, Austria, in early March, when she first noticed early symptoms. (Only three so far have experienced severe symptoms.)
Groceries are delivered to her door by her parents. The days are long and boring. But Camazine knows she really has no other choice. If she wants her community to remain safe, she needs to remain home. It seems simple but, with others not taking the coronavirus seriously, it’s a reminder she feels bears repeating.
“I feel like I’m standing on a beach looking at the ocean, and there’s this giant tsunami wave approaching,” Camazine said. “And I’m trying to reach people on the beach. I’m yelling and screaming and saying, ‘Hey, you need to come in! You need to come in! Things are about to get really bad,’ and it’s like people are just staring, watching it happen.”
‘Super-frustrating’ lack of testing
Camazine wanted to get tested once she arrived home from Austria on March 16. Her parents, both in health care, wanted her to get tested, too.
She experienced an overnight fever March 13 of 101 degrees, she felt aches and chills for a few days, she lost her sense of taste and smell, and the physically fit student — who spent several days skiing in the Austrian alps — felt winded walking up stairs starting March 18. On top of that, she spent time in the Tyrol region of Austria, which has been among the hardest-hit in the country.
She knew she likely had COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, and President Donald Trump said March 6 anyone who needs a test will get a test. But both the screeners at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport on March 15 and at Mount Nittany Health on March 21 initially told her she didn’t qualify. Neither did her boyfriend at first.
Her symptoms weren’t severe enough, they said. She had also been in contact with a confirmed positive result when she was screened at Mount Nittany, but that wasn’t enough either, they told her.
“Had I not felt the moral obligation to listen to the CDC and self-isolate, and listen to my parents, I would have been fine to go out and go to the grocery store and pick up all the produce and squeeze a grapefruit and see if it was ripe enough and put it back,” she said. “It’s been super frustrating.”
Camazine had no idea when she left home March 5 for her boyfriend’s family’s annual skiing vacation just how serious the spread of the coronavirus was. Few in the U.S. did. Most Penn State professors wished their students well in the week before spring break, never suspecting they wouldn’t see them again for the rest of the semester. Austria had less than 50 cases among a population of 8.8 million at that point. No warning bells were sounded.
The situation deteriorated in a hurry. On March 10, their flight back home was canceled — although no reason was given. Camazine’s concern then grew. Trump announced a travel ban to the European Union on March 12 and declared a state of emergency the next day. On March 14, Camazine and her boyfriend’s family returned to the U.S. and landed safely in New York on March 15.
But the screening process at the airport did not reassure the young woman who hopes to one day become a lawyer focusing on public health.
“A TSA agent took my passport and escorted me to the screening line,” she recalled. “When we were waiting in the line, there was maybe 50-75 people all packed very tightly together. And I had this thought of, this is exactly what the CDC is telling us not to do.”
Agents checked Camazine’s temperature by pointing an external thermometer at her forehead. (Her fever had subsided a day or two prior.) And they checked her brief questionnaire, which asked if she had any prior symptoms (she had) and where she traveled. She was still immediately cleared.
By the morning of March 16, after spending a night with her boyfriend’s family, she returned to Happy Valley. But when she and her parents inquired about getting tested at Mount Nittany, when she was screened March 21, she was rebuffed.
Mount Nittany Health has repeatedly declined to respond to the CDT when asked how many tests it is able to administer daily. But, earlier this month, officials said the health system is following the CDC and state Department of Health guidelines for deciding which patients to test for coronavirus — which means a person must have fever, dry cough, shortness of breath and must have traveled to a Level 3 country to be considered “high risk,” per Dr. Nirmal Joshi, chief medical officer at Mount Nittany Health.
“Because we didn’t have those acute symptoms, we couldn’t get tested,” Camazine said, adding she didn’t have shortness of breath. “But we’ve had symptoms, we were in a high-risk area, so why weren’t we getting tested?”
Camazine’s father, Scott, was just as frustrated. As a doctor who graduated from Harvard Medical School, and who treats opioid addiction at a clinic in State College, he couldn’t understand how so little was being done for his daughter and, in general, the coronavirus.
He thought she had COVID-19. She thought so, too. But nothing — except her own sense of right and wrong — kept her from spending a week around Centre County doing what she normally does.
“You have everyone ... ranting and raving that we have to stop the virus, flatten the curve,” Scott Camazine said. “But you don’t do that by letting everyone run around.”
In a statement Sunday evening, Joshi said that Mount Nitttany Health continues “to align our approach to screening and testing with that of the experts at the CDC.”
“Those guidelines have been updated and modified repeatedly over the last weeks as the situation has evolved. We expect that will continue to be the case moving forward. Our approach and practices will continue to evolve accordingly,” he said. “At the same time, Mount Nittany Health and other health systems across the county are strongly advocating for greater access to testing and faster turnaround of tests performed at commercial laboratories. Accessible testing and prompt results are important for us and for the community.”
Finally getting tested
Whether she received a test or not, Caela was convinced she needed to quarantine herself.
She initially stayed with her mother and stepfather for a few nights, but she couldn’t hug them. She couldn’t even get close. She and her boyfriend had to use a separate bathroom from everyone else. And all common surfaces needed to be constantly cleaned with Clorox.
Once her boyfriend developed a fever, which quickly went away, the family agreed it would be best if she and her boyfriend stayed by themselves in his downtown house in State College. (And, by following all of the CDC guidelines, none of her family members developed any symptoms or required a test.)
Because of the boyfriend’s recent fever, Mount Nittany tested him for the coronavirus — and the test came back positive. Shortly thereafter, Caela Camazine was contacted by health officials in Chester County, one county over from where her boyfriend officially resides. She was finally tested Tuesday, three days after she was told she didn’t need to be tested.
She discovered Wednesday she was positive.
“The really big part of why I wanted to get tested was so I can go see my dad,” said Camazine, whose father is 67 years old. “Because I can’t do that until I know I’m negative because my dad is a higher-risk person.”
Said her father: “It’s fantastic news she got a very mild case, so now she’ll develop immunity and she’s great. The only thing that bothers me is I can’t contact her until she’s OK.”
She’s still taking Mucinex and drinking tea to relieve congestion, and she still hasn’t regained her sense of smell. But she expects — she hopes — that she’ll be reunited with her family soon.
Until then, she’s studying for the LSATs, writing down her daily experiences in a diary and compiling data on her boyfriend’s family and those who returned home from Austria.
Camazine’s data
Caela Camazine, who sometimes helps her father at his State College clinic, isn’t one to normally sit around.
So, with plenty of time on her hands, she decided to send surveys to her boyfriend’s family members to better understand any patterns among the group. Of the 23 people she collected data on, from the ages of 15 to 67, the results showed mild cases — at least among the family — were more commonplace. Six were confirmed positive.
The list, which she provided to the CDT, showed that two of the family members, ages 58 and 63, had severe symptoms and another who was 60 was hospitalized. But another pair, ages 60 and 62, showed no symptoms at all.
Overall, eight of the 23 have shown no symptoms while 12 have shown mild symptoms.
Again, this is a small-sample size so no conclusions should be drawn based simply on this data, but it serves as an anecdotal snapshot of one particular group of people.
Still, Camazine’s father was especially struck by one finding.
“The most interesting thing is that it’s looking as if this symptom of anosmia,” Scott Camazine said, explaining that refers to the lack of being able to smell and taste, “could be a very important first warning sign.”
Scott Camazine shared his hypothesis with the Centre Daily Times on Friday, and several doctor groups — such as the British Rhinological Society — have also raised similar concerns. At least a half-dozen members of Caela’s vacationing group have described anosmia.
On Saturday, Bloomberg reported the results of a Harvard medical study that found the coronavirus is “capable of attacking key cells in the nose, which may explain the unusual finding that some COVID-19 sufferers lose their ability to smell and taste.” Even Utah Jazz star Rudy Gobert, who tested positive for the coronavirus, said last week he couldn’t taste or smell.
“At first, on March 17, when I lost my sense of taste and smell, I called my dad and said, ‘This is really weird because I’m not congested,’” Calea said with a slight laugh. “And I’ve been giving my dad a hard time about this, but he kind of brushed it off.”
Until he saw the data. Now he’s part of a growing number of medical professionals who believe there is a likely connection.
Looking ahead
As of noon Saturday, there are just 15 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in Centre County — and Caela Camazine was the eighth or ninth case in the county. But the rate of growth of the coronavirus is exponential.
On March 10, 12 cases were confirmed in Pennsylvania. A week later, there were 96. A week after that, 851.
Scott Camazine was encouraged by Gov. Tom Wolf’s stay-at-home order Saturday for Centre County, but he believes the country could and should be doing so much more. No one in the health department has contacted Caela to see where she’s been or whom she’s had contact with. There is no mandatory quarantine for buses arriving in State College from hot zones. And there is no penalty for those who suspect they’re infected, like Caela was a week ago, and who decide to skip self-isolation and simply head to the grocery store.
For Caela, her self-quarantine may end shortly. She is required to be completely symptom-free for three days before venturing outside the house. And then, and only then, can she safely embrace her mom and dad instead of exchanging “Love yous” on FaceTime.
“I still don’t know when the next time I’m going to be able to hug my dad is,” Caela said. “I don’t know the next time I’ll be able to sit on the couch and watch a movie with him. I don’t know ... and that uncertainty is challenging.”
She looks forward to being with her family, hugging her dad and him telling her that everything’s going to be all right.
For as happy as that reunion will be, he just doesn’t know if he can tell her, for the rest of the county, that it will be.
This story was originally published March 29, 2020 at 10:18 AM.
