Medical team from Minnesota returns from San Diego Coronavirus quarantine base
This man was one of about a dozen that just returned to Minnesota from a Coronavirus quarantine zone in San Diego.
(FOX 9) - Minnesotans are helping out efforts to quarantine people arriving in the U.S. from places that are seeing big outbreaks of the Coronavirus.
A Minnesota man is part of a D-MAT, or Disaster Medical Assistance Team. The members of this team are medical professionals that act as reservists and respond to medical emergencies if the federal government says they need their help.
This man, Greg Bodin, just returned from the Miramar Marine Air Base in San Diego. He described what the quarantine situation was like there.
“Our team, Minnesota One, helped with assessing the evacuees in terms of their own health, but also provided medical care,” Bodin said.
He is one of around a dozen Minnesotan medical professionals that were called to help with the quarantine efforts at Miramar.
“At my base, we had 232 some evacuees that we provided support for,” he added.
Bodin works as a pastor at two local hospitals and is a fire marshal for the Robbinsdale Fire Department. His role for the past two weeks, however, was making sure medical professionals on his team were safely providing medical care for evacuees from China.
“They needed protection and isolation from each other,” he said. “We needed protection and isolation from them and yet make those human connections.”
Bodin said, on the base, families were sometimes separated, some were frightened and people were grieving loved ones who died from the virus.
Tuesday, Minnesota Department of Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm gave an update to state lawmakers on how they’re monitoring the virus.
“At the present time, even if we do have some cases in Minnesota, there’s no reason at present to believe that this is going to become widespread circulating in the community,” Malcolm said.
Malcolm sought to assure lawmakers and the public that the state is prepared to respond if it needs to.
Bodin says being prepared and learning from these situations will help prepare them for any similar outbreaks in the future.
“There will be others,” he said. “Not if, but when. So, how do we prepare ourselves?”
The Minnesota medical team returned Sunday as they were relieved by a team from Alaska. Now, that team is dealing with the next flow of people who need to be quarantined.