Three years ago this month, the case count of COVID-19 in Pennsylvania officially began.

Authors Ayse Yilmaz and Allison Hermane, with the Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania, are precise in their data, writing “the case counts started with just two cases on March 6, 2020, and rose to approximately a million by the anniversary of the pandemic’s arrival in the commonwealth,” in their work “Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Pennsylvania and its health care system” in the journal Health Science Reports.

Pennsylvania was among the states hardest hit by the virus in the early days of the spread, with the Lehigh Valley, according to Yilmaz and Hermane, holding the ominous honor of “highest incidence rate.”

By March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization assessed COVID-19 as a pandemic.

“We have rung the alarm bell loud and clear,” WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a media briefing that day.

On March 16, 2020, the state of Pennsylvania effectively shut down.

Then-Gov. Tom Wolf urged Pennsylvanians to “stay calm, stay safe, stay home.”

Public schools closed.

Grocery store shelves emptied.

Acronyms such as PPE and phrases like “social distancing” entered everyday conversation.

Layoffs came for some. Others worked from home. Some gained a new descriptor for their resumes: essential.

Older adults were particularly hard hit in the earliest days of the spread of COVID-19.

There were bright spots. First responders, health care professionals, mail carriers, delivery service workers and supermarket stockers, among others on the front lines, received heartfelt appreciation, thanks and applause.

Religious congregations, civic organizations and other groups ramped up food collections and distributions for people in need, and crafters, sewing enthusiasts and others created face masks for hospitals.

Parents and guardians gained new understanding of what their students were working on at school when classrooms came to kitchen tables.

Local libraries offered curbside services to check out books so readers could find a new favorite author, develop a skill or revisit a literary classic.

Pets loved having their humans home.

Some of us reached out by phone or computer to relatives, friends across town or on the other side of the world, teachers, old college roommates, former work colleagues and others to offer encouragement, catch up or just to ask “how are you doing in all of this?”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, COVID-19 was the third leading cause of death in 2020. Coronavirus Disease, aka COVID-19, also debuted as a cause of death that year.

A friend of mine sometimes marks time with the term B.C., shorthand for “before COVID.” Another points to March 2020 as “when the world changed.”

Never one to shy away from stating the obvious, allow me to say COVID-19 touched every one of us. Every. One.

It will continue to do so, three Marches out and beyond.

How are you doing in all of this?

April Peterson

editorial assistant

East Penn Press

Salisbury Press