Methodist Hospital marks one year of COVID-19 in Nebraska

OMAHA, Neb. (WOWT) - Methodist Hospital is checking in with the state’s first COVID-19 patient nearly a year after they were diagnosed.

In March of 2020, Emma Hutchinson walked into Methodist Hospital to address a migraine accompanied by her father, Ralph Hutchinson. It was the third time that week Emma had been in for migraines and Emma had recently been traveling in the United Kingdom.

A nurse checked Emma’s blood oxygen level and discovered it was dangerously low, followed by a chest X-ray ordered by Dr. McMahon that indicated pneumonia. That’s when Methodist Hospital infection preventionist Amanda Wyant was alerted.

“Which led to listening to lungs and she had dimensioning breath sounds which was unusual for her complaints. I asked her father if they had been in contact with anybody that was ill or if they had traveled anywhere. He had mentioned that they had just gotten back from England,” says Dr. Pat McMahon, Methodist Women’s Hospital Emergency Medicine Physician.

Wyant pushed for the health department to test Emma for COVID-19 as well as ordered a CT scan, which revealed ground-glass opacities consistent with COVID-19.

“We had that aha moment that yes, this is COVID-19 as we’ve been putting the pieces of this puzzle together until we proved differently. That’s when we made that call to the health department,” says Dr. Robert Penn, Methodist Hospital Infection Prevention Medical Director

The next day, Emma’s COVID-19 test came back positive, and that evening, she was transferred from Methodist Hospital to the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit.

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