The fear is still there, but some first responders have somewhat mastered coping with that fear of COVID-19.
“You push it back so that you can maintain your mission,” Parma firefighter and department spokesperson T.J. Martin said.
But the fear of unknowingly carrying the virus is hard to ignore. Martin says no one on his team has tested positive, but it would be comforting to know for sure.
“I’m pretty confident that when we do get tested a lot of first responders throughout the country are going to come back as testing positive for COVID-19,” he said. “You don’t know if you’re carrying that virus to other members of your family or other members of your department family or possibly to the community at large.”
With testing still limited across the state, Dr. Christine Schmotzer, University Hospitals’ Chief of the Division of Clinical Pathology, says antibody testing will help determine if someone was ever infected with COVID-19 and could help confirm if they were asymptomatic.