For Laura Curran, pandemic went from a trickle to a flood

On a Tuesday in February 2020, Nassau County Executive Laura Curran was discussing new infrastructure projects with her two top deputies when county Health Commissioner Lawrence Eisenstein interrupted the meeting.

"I looked at his face, and I shut the door," Curran recalled. "He said, ‘We may have a positive case.’ "

A teacher at Elmont Memorial High School, who had been on a school trip in Italy, had developed some of the symptoms known at the time for a new virus — a cough and fever — and had tested negative for the flu.

The teacher's test sample was flown to the Atlanta headquarters of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Thirty-six hours later, it came back negative for the coronavirus, which causes the respiratory illness called COVID-19.

But "we knew it was a matter of time," Curran said.

A few days later, on March 5, an employee of Mercy Medical Center in Rockville Centre who also ran a car service that served local airports became the first Long Island resident to test positive for the virus.

'You had the stomach-dropping realization that it is here'

Laura Curran

"We realized we are so focused on people bringing it in from China or Italy, and in this case, it hadn't traveled at all. And you had the stomach-dropping realization that it is here, and he got it through community spread," Curran recalled.

"There’s just so much that we didn’t know," Curran said. "We kept hearing from everyone, from the federal government, saying you can go about your daily lives, wash your hands — so that’s what we did. We all went about our normal lives."

In a series of interviews conducted since the pandemic hit Long Island a year ago, Curran described how she and other top county officials dealt with the worst health crisis to hit the nation in 100 years — from last March, when infections grew from a "trickle to a flood," through the summer as new cases subsided, and into winter as infections spiked again and the county struggled to distribute vaccines that were in short supply.

So far, there have been 158,000 COVID-19 infections and 3,000 deaths in Nassau.

Curran recalled telephone calls with hospital executives worried about supplies of ventilators; nightly condolence calls from her home in Baldwin to families that had lost loved ones to COVID-19; late-afternoon discussions with law enforcement and emergency management staff about how to locate refrigerated trucks for temporary morgue space; and her own 10-day quarantines in both January and February, after potential exposures to the virus.

Curran, a Democrat seeking reelection in November, conducted 118 daily public briefings through July 13, speaking six to seven days a week from a lectern in the plaza outside the Theodore Roosevelt legislative and county executive building in Mineola.

Each day, Curran ticked off the latest statistics about virus infection rates, hospitalizations and COVID-19 deaths. She repeated admonitions about maintaining social distance, wearing protective masks and washing hands.

By the time fall arrived, something that seemed improbable in early spring had occurred: New infection rates were holding at about 1%, compared with 51% in early April at the pandemic's height in the county.

But infection rates rose as the cold weather months arrived, and Curran and other officials had to move to tamp down outbreaks in virus hot spots so new cases didn't get out of control.

A 'calming and competent influence'

Former Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford) said that overall, Curran exhibited steadiness and energy during the worst of the pandemic last spring.

'It never got the best of her ... she never acted like she knew it all. She was a calming and competent influence.'

Former Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford) on Curran's leadership during the pandemic

King recalled speaking with Nassau County police officers on Curran's security detail, "and they were saying she was going everywhere — not in a frenzied way," but "calmingly going to place after place … telling me she was nonstop."

He continued: "It never got the best of her; she stayed on top of it. Also she never acted like she knew it all. She was a calming and competent influence."

Nassau County Legis. Richard Nicolello (R-New Hyde Park), the presiding officer, said Curran "deserves to take part of the credit for how well the county responded."

But Nicolello argued that Curran should have been more aggressive last year in pressing Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to reopen the economy.

'Her relationship with the governor did not allow her to go out front in most of these issues where Nassau was different from the city.'

Nassau County Legis. Richard Nicolello (R-New Hyde Park)

"I think that her relationship with the governor did not allow her to go out front in most of these issues where Nassau was different from [New York City], and we needed things to go forward," Nicolello said.

"Our response was dictated completely by the state, so I mean every policy we adopted and restriction and regulation essentially was the state," he said.

For her part, Curran said "I think that sometimes I may have become annoying" to the governor's staff in sharing her concerns about local businesses.

"I think I’ve been pretty strong in reflecting what I've seen on the ground to the state."

'The darkest time'

Thinking back to the start of the pandemic last year, Curran said, "that last week in March, the first week in April, was definitely the darkest time."

She recalled a meeting in the office of Chief Deputy County Executive Helena Williams, a former Long Island Rail Road president. At issue was how to secure enough refrigerated trucks to hold dozens of bodies temporarily because hospital systems and morgues had become overwhelmed.

Curran said she also held calls at 4:45 p.m. each day with the county Office of Emergency Management, in which officials recapped the day "dispassionately."

In one call, Nassau police Commissioner Patrick Ryder began discussing the "overflow of the bodies, and we’re all very matter of fact, and in my head I stood back from the scene," Curran said.

'Holy cow I would have never imagined I would be having a matter of fact conversation about refrigerated trucks for corpses.'

Laura Curran 

"I was like, ‘Holy cow, I would have never imagined I would be having a matter-of-fact conversation about refrigerated trucks for corpses,’ " Curran said.

It struck her: "OK, this is our reality, this is what we’re doing."

Living a 'new reality'

Curran found some relief in family life with her husband and daughters at home in Baldwin.

At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, with official evening events canceled, Curran was able to return home, "at a relatively decent hour every night, which was a new reality."

She recalled that "home seemed very normal and lovely, and it was like a refuge. Dealing with my kids … and dealing with their fighting, dealing with normal stuff was a relief, walking the dog … "

Curran's husband, John Curran, an attorney and former federal prosecutor, was working from home while their daughters Julie, 15, a 10th-grader, and Molly, 13, who is in seventh grade, also were home. Their eldest, Claire, 20, was living in New York City.

Curran said she tried not to take work calls in front of her husband and children.

'I was calling someone every day who had lost a parent.'

Laura Curran

In fact, avoiding them became a routine. "Go into my room, close the door. Go into the bathroom, close the door … just so they wouldn’t have to hear me go on and on," Curran said.

During one period, she said, "I was calling someone every day who had lost a parent."

Hospitals running low on ventilators

In late March, Curran was on calls from her office in Mineola with executives of Nassau’s five major hospital systems: NYU Langone; NuHealth, the public benefit corporation that runs Nassau University Medical Center, the county's only public hospital; Northwell Health; Catholic Health; and Mount Sinai, which runs Mount Sinai South Nassau hospital in Oceanside.

The "tone of their voices was so urgent," Curran recalled. "Three of them said they were going to be out of ventilators in three to five days. They could make it to the next three days."

Then, she said, "you see the ingenuity happen — where they split ventilators — they use 3D printers to make a T-shaped adapter" that allows two patients to use the same tube.

The hospitals "just made it and they got through the surge with enough ventilators. We got right up to the limit when we were about to run out, but we never got over that limit," Curran said.

'That was the scariest time of the whole pandemic.'

Laura Curran recalling local hospitals coming close to running out of ventilators

"That was the scariest time of the whole pandemic."

What hospital leaders say

Dr. Joseph Greco, chief of hospital operations for NYU Langone Hospital-Long Island in Mineola, was on some of the calls with Curran.

Greco briefed other executives on an issue his hospital had begun to experience: Because of high oxygen use by patients, vaporizers that convert liquid oxygen into gas were icing up. Other hospital officials checked and discovered the problem in departments at their institutions, Greco said.

The tone of such calls was "passionate," Greco recalled.

"When certain hospitals said, ‘We’re really short on ventilators,’ they made that passion clear," he said.

"It [was] an administrator saying, ‘This is what I need, Laura. You're the CE, you have to help me,’ " Greco recalled.

'[Curran] came with a lot of questions each time and she would just let us talk and explain the science around it.’'

Dr. Mark Jarrett, chief quality officer for Northwell Health

Dr. Mark Jarrett, chief quality officer for Northwell Health, was on at least a dozen of the daily calls with Curran last spring.

"People were worried," Jarrett recalled. "We did get questions like, ‘Are we going to run out of ventilators? Are there enough beds?’ "

He said Curran "came with a lot of questions each time, and she would just let us talk and explain the science around it."

"It's very easy when you're living it, at the health systems, to not translate what you kind of know to others because it becomes part of your everyday life," Jarrett said. "We had to make sure we grounded others. They're not living it 18 hours a day."

Jarrett said hospital officials explained to county officials "the reality that things were changing all the time." That can be "disturbing in and of itself," he noted.

The decision to close schools

Schools also were a constant issue for Curran.

On March 11, Curran and Eisenstein, the county health commissioner, met in person with school superintendents at the county’s BOCES building in Garden City about strategies to contain coronavirus transmission among students.

The Plainview-Old Bethpage School District already had closed for the week, with officials citing possible transmission in some buildings.

Other districts hadn’t yet reported virus exposures.

"There was a lot of confusion among parents and school administrators about what to do," Curran said.

In speaking with superintendents, she found they were under "a real wide range of the pressure — variations in the pressure that they were feeling from their parents."

Some communities "were putting a lot of pressure on their school districts [to close], others not so much," Curran said.

"Through no fault of their own, their response was inconsistent," she said of superintendents. "That led to a lot of confusion in the public."

At the time, Curran and Eisenstein, who also is a doctor specializing in internal medicine and infectious diseases, were relying on the CDC's pandemic protocol guidance, which says school "is one of the last things you close," Curran said.

The logic was that "if kids are out of school, if they’re being watched by grandparents that are more vulnerable … there would be wider risk of spread," Curran said. "I thought that made sense."

Curran spoke with Cuomo about the schools issue on March 15 on a private line.

With Cuomo, "it was more, ‘What are you gonna say, these are things we need to think about … ’ " Curran said. "He was wrestling with the same decision."

Curran decided to close schools that morning, hours before New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone made similar announcements. She relied on a county "declaration of emergency" clause to close schools for two weeks.

The next day, Cuomo ordered schools closed statewide. On May 1, Cuomo made official what had been obvious to many educators and parents: Schools would stay closed at least until the fall.

"The runway had gotten too short for schools to reopen this year," Curran said in an interview on May 3.

"Think about what they had to put in place — buses and bus drivers, lunches, cafeteria protocol, the nurses getting the medication for the kids, cleaning," she said. "I know a lot of school districts were anxious; they didn’t have the PPE they needed."

Going viral on TikTok

But by the end of last summer, the rate of new infections in Nassau County was holding steady at about 1%, like the state's.

Curran said she was able to focus increasingly on how to boost local businesses.

"It feels really good to have other problems to deal with," she said on Aug. 26, noting there were "some days where we don’t have any people on ventilators" in county hospitals.

As the number of positive cases declined, some of Curran's briefings took on a lighter tone.

Eager to get Long Islanders back to normal activities, Curran appeared on May 15 at the tennis courts at Eisenhower Park to explain ground rules for the public to resume the sport.

Everyone should bring their own tennis balls, Curran announced, "so that you don’t touch other people’s tennis balls, with your hands. You can kick their balls, but you can’t touch them."

It captures the absurdity of the moment we are in …

Laura Curran on her viral video 

"I’m gonna blush, sorry," Curran said, bursting into laughter. The clip went viral. "I got 10 million views," she said, and her children "were very impressed I made it to TikTok. It captures the absurdity of the moment we are in … "

By this point, Curran for months had been walking a line between backing strict health safeguards and pressing to reopen the county's economy.

Calls to reopen the economy and for justice

In early May, residents who wanted officials to speed reopening staged a demonstration in which they drove around county headquarters in Mineola. Some shouted at Curran as she conducted her daily coronavirus briefing.

Curran said she understood the frustration and was surprised there weren’t more such protests.

"We gotta get this stuff cranking up again," she said in an interview on May 11.

"You know that we will reopen at some point, that day is coming; I want people to start visualizing it," Curran said.

Curran's concern about reopening came as protests were occurring in Nassau and across the nation in reaction to George Floyd's death in Minneapolis police custody on May 25. Derek Chauvin, a white officer, had restrained Floyd, a Black man, by keeping his knee on his neck for about nine minutes.

"Who does that? It's so weird. Why didn't the other cops say OK, after a few minutes here, let’s move this along?" Curran said in an interview on June 1.

'There was already so much uncertainty and anxiety ... now there’s sort of an existential crisis in our country.'

Laura Curran

"There was already so much uncertainty and anxiety already in people’s minds, and that was challenging in and of itself. Now there’s sort of an existential crisis in our country," Curran said.

"We’ve just been inside for three months or however long it is now, there’s a national movement against racism, and people are marching in the streets nationwide, but yet society isn’t really open yet," she said.

Curran's concern about the economy continued into early winter.

The infection rate rises again

By the second week of November, the rate of new COVID-19 infections was going in the wrong direction.

On Nov. 8, the rate of positive test results in the county was 2.8%; the next day, it was 3.09%.

"Winter is coming," Curran said in an interview on Nov. 13, "and my main concern is that the businesses are doing the right thing, the schools are doing the right thing, and I want them to be able to continue to function."

She added: "I'd like the schools to reopen even more, but with the numbers and the way things are going, I'm concerned. We've gone from the 1.5% to 2.8% just in a week or two. It’s concerning, after we had done so well for so long."

In an interview on Dec. 31, Curran noted the county's latest infection rate: 10.5%.

"It was a feeling of almost inevitability about it. We saw an uptick after Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas/Hanukkah," Curran said. "Now, we’re about to celebrate the most social of all, New Year's Eve."

Nonetheless, with effective vaccines coming, Curran said she was "looking forward in the new year on reporting on how many doses have been administered and to whom."

'How do you unscare people?'

Laura Curran

After so much of her time was devoted to ticking off grim statistics about infection rates and deaths since last March, she said, "now we're going to be giving vaccination numbers; that’s a good positive number to start getting out there."

In an interview this February, Curran remarked that once most people who want the vaccine have been inoculated, she'll be "curious to see: Are people going to wear masks? Are we going back to shaking hands? Are we going to have those cocktail parties and networking events? Close talking?"

She continued: "How do you unscare people?"

By Scott Eidler

scott.eidler@newsday.com@ScottEidler

Scott Eidler is a deputy editor for the towns department at Newsday. Scott has worked at Newsday since 2012 and previously covered municipal government and education.