LOOK FOR THE Helpers

AS THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC WREAKED CHAOS ALL OVER THE WORLD, THESE OKLAHOMANS JUMPED IN TO DO WHAT THEY COULD TO MAKE LIFE A LITTLE BETTER DURING AN UNPRECEDENTED CRISIS.

- DYRINDA TYSON

AT FIRST, JANA thought her family had dodged the COVID-19 bullet.

“My sister’s partner is the one that was first exposed by a guy at work,” she says. “They had ridden around in the car together.”

Jana, an Oklahoma City-area resident who asked her identity be masked for privacy’s sake, says she and her family immediately quarantined themselves and watched for symptoms. Two weeks passed with no signs of illness, much to everyone’s relief.

Two days after their quarantine ended, both Jana’s sister and her sister’s partner woke up sick. They immediately sought out testing for both COVID-19 and influenza. They tested negative for the coronavirus but positive for the flu.

“So we all thought, ‘No big deal,’” Jana says. This was in late June, more than three months after Oklahoma recorded its first positive test result. That first positive was a Tulsa man in his fifties who’d recently returned from Italy, which was a coronavirus hot spot at the time. The Oklahoma State Department of Health made the announcement on March 6.

By April 6, the number of infected Oklahomans had grown to 1,327.