Fortifying the Frontlines Against COVID-19

When you work about 12 hours a day, seven days a week to fight the spread of COVID-19, a person's commitment is confirmed. Assisting billions in managing billions of dollars and hundreds of support workers for people battling outbreaks across the country testifies to their leadership.

Peggy Honein (r.), Who leads the state, tribal, local and territorial assistance task force in the CDC's COVID-19 response, speaks to CNN's Don Lemon. Peggy tells Don how schools can safely reopen.

Peggy Honein has spent most of the time in the CDC's COVID-19 response strengthening the country's health departments and redesigning the way CDC forces work with them.

In early 2020, when the world, like most of us, started hearing about COVID-19, Peggy lived on as usual.

She and her extended family were planning a celebration for their father's 80th birthday this summer. As director of CDC's Birth Defects and Infant Disorders Division, Peggy prepared to speak at a conference on birth defects and disabilities in Sri Lanka.

Then COVID-19 started spreading in Asia and Europe.

"They didn't call this a pandemic yet, but I was increasingly concerned about international travel for my staff and myself, so I canceled the trip," says Peggy.

With her calendar already locked for Sri Lanka, Peggy volunteered to participate in the COVID-19 response. Almost immediately, she was asked to send to Northern California to lead a team at Travis Air Force Base (Travis), where the US government opened a federal quarantine facility. She was leaving in 48 hours.

"I recorded my presentation for the Sri Lanka conference and went home to pack," says Peggy.

The main job of her team in Travis was helping evacuees from the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which was anchored off the coast of Japan with a COVID-19 outbreak on board.

“They had been quarantined on the ship for about 12 days. Then they had a long flight to the US to start a new 14-day quarantine, "says Peggy. "Many passengers were older and had illnesses that put them at increased risk of serious illness."

“The passengers were afraid of this new virus. They had spent a lot of time in a very small space on the ship and were lonely. Some had family members who were hospitalized while still in Japan with COVID-19. "

Passenger fear deeply affected the staff, and mental health professionals took care of passengers and staff. Despite the challenges, Peggy's team and colleagues at the Department of Health continued to focus on slowing the progression of COVID-19 in the US and gaining time to prepare the country.

After Peggy finished her work at Travis, she flew to Seattle to jointly lead a team of 42 emergency responders helping a health department fight outbreaks in long-term care facilities and quickly getting notified of the spread of the virus among staff and residents. Many patients died before preventive measures were implemented to stop the spread of COVID-19 in the facilities.

"The severity of the impact COVID-19 has on long-term care workers and residents has become real," Peggy says. “There were employees who were afraid to come to work. Some worked in multiple facilities just to pay bills. This unfortunate reality risked the spread of infection between facilities. "

Upon her return to Atlanta, although symptom-free, Peggy was quarantined at home for 14 days to protect her CDC colleagues who were still in the office. Increasing cases of COVID-19 also began to affect her personal life. Her father's birthday party was postponed indefinitely and major holidays were celebrated on video chat.

Peggy's success in building relationships with health departments in California and Washington soon paid off across the country. In Atlanta, she became deputy head and then head of the STLT (State, Tribal, Local, and Territorial) Response Task Force, where she is the face of the response to the nation's health departments.

“State and local health departments are the front line, the truth on the ground. They let us know when they are frustrated with seemingly insurmountable obstacles, ”says Peggy. "We like this type of communication because it helps us determine the next steps in response."

Response staff will usually work on the response temporarily and then return to their normal duties at CDC. To enable the health departments to communicate with partners continuously, Peggy has added more than 40 full-time employees to the STLT Task Force.

Peggy, a trained epidemiologist, has been continuously collecting information on the spread of COVID-19 herself and in the health departments. Her name appears particularly frequently in the CDC's scientific studies on the pandemic. She raised important issues such as the decisions and guidelines needed to ensure the school reopened safely.

Peggy has also made sure that health departments are informed of any new discoveries made from the data they have collected. This will help them improve their efforts against the spread of COVID-19. Even when vaccines are given, Peggy says we cannot lower our guard.

"While everyone is fed up with the pandemic and wants it to be over, we need to further distance ourselves and wear masks to slow the spread while we work diligently to achieve high vaccination rates," says Peggy.