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When fishermen in Maine first noticed that sales in Asia had slowed, few Americans had heard of the novel coronavirus. Some had heard about a mysterious virus in China or read news reports when authorities locked down Wuhan, home to eleven million people, in an attempt to stop its spread. But the problem seemed like just another sad news story happening someplace far away.

But Ben Martens ’06, executive director of the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association, was learning all that he could about the new coronavirus. Members of his organization rely heavily on Asian customers who buy lobster and monkfish. As prices dropped, he wondered how severe and long-lasting the slowdown would be, and he sought new buyers who could get the industry through a hard couple of months. But he thought that an epidemic “couldn’t happen here in the United States, in Maine.”

Just thirty miles down the coast, Dr. Dora Anne Mills ’82, chief health improvement officer at MaineHealth, had been receiving increasingly urgent updates about the burgeoning virus all winter. 

She and her colleagues hoped that the virus would be contained overseas, but over the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend, they prepared their eleven hospitals for a public health emergency.

MaineHealth created a way to flag patient files for symptoms of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, and created protocols for safely treating potential coronavirus cases. They posted signs about fevers and coughs at the entrances to all their facilities, and they began to order more protective gear and testing equipment for MaineHealth’s 23,000 employees.

“By early February, I was working on coronavirus probably at least half of my time, and by the end of February, it was all my time,” said Mills, who, prior to MaineHealth, was director for public health for the State of Maine and director of the Maine CDC for fifteen years.

Martens and Mills had an early look at a health care and economic crisis that has paralyzed much of the world. When the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the fast-spreading coronavirus a global health emergency at the end of January, few Americans understood how severely it would affect their lives. But, as it tore through large swaths of the country, the gravity of the situation became clear—the virus would spark the most serious health and economic crisis that politicians, educators, social workers, business owners, and medical professionals have faced in generations.

The new coronavirus came to America early this year, showing up first in Washington state, where politicians hoped it would be contained. But the virus was exceedingly contagious. Public health officials watched with dread as it spread through Europe in February and the death toll in China topped 1,000 people.

The nation’s first responders heard about how quickly the virus had spread in Washington and how severely ill people had become. Some noted that Italy’s reported cases grew exponentially, from just a handful to more than 150 in a matter of days, and that officials had locked down towns and canceled events. They grew alarmed.

“A lot of our awareness started with our emergency services and the fire department,” said Audra Caler ’05, the town manager of Camden, Maine.

“They just knew it was happening. They’re connected with other departments across the country, and they were aware early on that this was something they’d have to prepare for.”

Not every town and city heeded early warnings, but Caler decided to plan for a possible epidemic. “In February, we started to think, okay, this will directly affect all of us,” she said.

Along with the fire department, the police department, and the town’s financial managers, she identified areas that could be hard hit by a virus, like Camden’s three elder care facilities.

“Our fire chief is also our emergency management director, and he worked with the nursing homes early to outline plans and make sure they had the resources they needed to respond,” she said. (As of late May, none of those facilities had experienced a severe outbreak.)

Homebound people would also need extra help, so Camden modified a police program, “Good Morning, Camden,” which it used to check in on the town’s elderly residents. Officers would now check in on more people and see if they needed essential supplies.

Caler’s apprehension grew when seasonal residents returned to town months earlier than usual to escape potential coronavirus hot spots. Camden’s finance director began to procure more personal protective equipment, or PPE. First responders created new emergency response procedures that would protect them from exposure to the virus.

The State of Maine was preparing, too. On March 2, Governor Janet Mills convened a coronavirus response team led by Dr. Nirav Shah, the director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and commissioners who oversee public health and safety, education, veterans affairs, prisons, transportation, labor issues, finance, and emergency management. She also had conversations with her sister, Dora, about what was happening in the medical community. The picture did not look good. Nine days later, President Trump banned visitors from most of Europe. Stock markets fell. And the WHO deemed the coronavirus a global pandemic.

In March, the world changed, sharply and swiftly.

In the beginning, some offices closed when employees were thought to have the virus, but life mostly proceeded as usual.

Tasha Graff ’07 attended a 250-person retirement party for her father on March 7 at the Museum of Science in Boston. “We are so lucky no one got ill there,” she said. Guests nervously talked about the virus. Hardly anyone shook hands. Hand sanitizer flowed.

By the time Graff got back from Boston, panic buying had begun around South Portland, where she teaches high school English. Lines were longer, and shelves were emptier. News reports said that the virus could wreak havoc in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York City. While Maine seemed relatively safe, school administrators had started to hold meetings about the virus. She hoped that they would remain in session until the April break, when they could come up with a “plan B.”

Several New England colleges moved to online learning. Martens, who lives in Brunswick, had heard that ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ was thinking about closing the campus, and he “knew that the threat had moved to a new level” when it finally happened. He ramped up his outreach to Maine’s congressional delegation, and his association made a bigger push to get health information to fishermen, many of whom were in demographics that were most impacted by the virus.

“I realized that my high school would close down sooner than later,” Graff said. “This was not something we wanted to be behind on.”

Caitlin Civiello ’10, an emergency room doctor at Mid Coast Hospital, flew to Florida to see her in-laws on the day that the NBA said a player had tested positive for coronavirus and it was suspending the basketball season.

Her hospital director asked her to return to Maine immediately. While Civiello was at the airport on her way home, Pen Bay Medical Center, where she picks up shifts, asked if she could work the following morning. The first patient in Maine had tested positive for the virus, and everyone would be in meetings related to the pandemic.

“I’d read about the virus spreading in Washington state and Italy and China, but I didn’t think it would affect me yet,” Civiello said. “I wasn’t paying close attention to the me