By Matt Bittle

DOVER — It’s been a rough 12 months since the start of the pandemic for everyone. For Gov. John Carney, the lowest point came in late April.

At that point, it had been a bit more than six weeks since Delaware had announced its first confirmed instance of COVID-19, and cases were spreading quickly. Around 300 people were hospitalized (the total actually surpassed 300 for a few days before dropping again), and the daily total of new cases exceeded 400 a few times.

As cases in Sussex County swamped the poultry industry, one of the county’s major employers, the potential for the situation to get almost exponentially worse loomed.

“We didn’t know what we didn’t know. There was a lot of fear and anxiety and we had a significant outbreak in poultry plants in the lower part of our state,” Gov. Carney recalled recently.

Because employees in the plants are close together during the workday and because many also live in crowded quarters, conditions ripe for spreading COVID, the Division of Public Health was recommending Delaware close its poultry facilities for the time being. The question of what to do with the plants plagued the governor, who wanted to keep people safe but also feared the economic impact of a closure.

Before he could make a decision, one was made for him: then-President Donald Trump issued an executive order mandating beef, pork and poultry plants be kept open.

Delaware scrambled to ramp up testing of employees and their family members, although the fact some are Hispanic and do not speak English well created another hurdle.

It’s not clear exactly how many poultry workers ended up catching coronavirus. But for a short time, at least, the Georgetown area was the clear hot spot in the state.

Hospitalizations

From the early going, one of the governor’s chief concerns was hospital space. Scenes of overcrowded hospitals around the world, such as in Italy and New York City, raised the specter of Delaware’s medical centers being inundated with patients. The state hit a spring high of 337 COVID hospitalizations, coming on April 27, though the total fell to half that by the beginning of June.

Many of the steps taken by the state in the initial stages of the pandemic were aimed at freeing up hospital capacity, with government officials working closely with the hospitals to set up auxiliary care and contingency plans.

Gov. Carney said he has been extremely impressed with the hospitals and how they’ve managed capacity, helping to avoid that worst-case scenario.

“We learned that we had a lot more capacity than it looked like on paper because of the ability of hospitals to manage. We also learned that hospitals could manage that capacity without us imposing, the government imposing, a particular approach to it,” he said.

Many elective surgeries were postponed, freeing up some beds at the expense of profit for the hospitals, the governor noted.

Unlike some states, Delaware never really came close to hitting its maximum capacity, Gov. Carney said, although he did get nervous this winter when COVID hospitalizations surpassed 400.

The total number of hospitalizations has remained fairly constant over the past year, with the fluctuation coming in the number of COVID and non-COVID patients, according to the governor.

The state was better equipped to handle the winter surge in large part because the virus had been around for more than half a year by that point, Gov. Carney said.

“You don’t know what you don’t know” early on, he said.

‘Economic carnage’

Officials started planning for COVID months before it actually hit Delaware, although they probably couldn’t have predicted it would still be raging a year later.

In the first days and weeks after March 11, Delaware instituted a state of emergency that remains in place today. Gov. John Carney closed or placed restrictions on many public outlets, such as businesses and schools, and issued a stay-at-home order for Delawareans.

The state’s economy saw a precipitous dip. More than 75,000 Delawareans filed for unemployment benefits between the first case and the end of April, double the number of claims in the prior year. Gov. Carney has described it as “economic carnage.”

By the time May rolled around, Gov. Carney had issued an order mandating people wear masks in public in Delaware. That restriction is still in place.

While he was hesitant to make predictions, Gov. Carney did express optimism about the future during a recent interview. The vaccination program is ramping up. To date, more than 303,000 doses have been administered here.

If there is a silver lining to the past year, it’s how individuals have stepped up and looked out for one another, said the governor, who’s fond of describing Delaware as a state of neighbors.

“They’ve shown resilience,” he said. “Those who are on the front lines have been dedicated to their work.”

He’s hopeful there will be significant good news come late summer or early fall. The warmer weather should help because it will allow more people to spend time outdoors, where it’s harder to transmit the virus from one individual to another.

Politics in a time of COVID

The governor has received some harsh criticism over the past year, most of it from Republicans. Gov. Carney said he recognizes why people have opposed the many mandates handed down by the state, but he refuses to back off his stance.

“I guess I understand that sentiment from a political philosophy point of view, but this is about saving and protecting lives,” he said.

He remains disappointed at the lack of leadership from the White House until relatively recently, saying President Trump “played into those differences and those fears and made it worse by flouting, if you will, mask wearing and belittling people that did and his own science staff and public health staff.”

GOP lawmakers have introduced bills to curb the power of the governor during the state of emergency, characterizing the ongoing restrictions as government overreach and even tyranny. Because Democrats control the General Assembly, the legislation probably won’t go anywhere.

The 2020 gubernatorial race essentially came down to COVID, with GOP nominee Julianne Murray bashing the governor and calling for a full-scale reopening, including an end to mask mandates.

In the midst of an election season quite literally like no other, Gov. Carney ran a muted campaign, keeping his focus on coronavirus. There were far fewer chances to interact face to face with Delawareans, and some of the usual debates and candidate forums were canceled, while others were held virtually.

In the end, Gov. Carney pulled in 59.5% of the vote, slightly besting his share from 2016 — an indication Delawareans prefer a more cautious approach, even if they may have concerns about some aspects of that plan.

For his part, Gov. Carney sees face coverings as a small sacrifice to keep people safe. States that have resisted such mandates have seen cases skyrocket, he noted, criticizing Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for recently lifting his state’s mask requirement.

In some ways, it’s a lose-lose scenario, as the many people holding diametrically opposed opinions mean some Delawareans will be unhappy no matter what Gov. Carney does with masks, schools or businesses.

Looking back and forward

The governor believes the state has effectively supported businesses and other entities, although some business owners would doubtless disagree. The restrictions still rankle many Delawareans, even as the state slowly eases up.

Asked what he would do differently from the past year, Gov. Carney said he has not really had time to reassess steps taken by the state, though he did note vaccination clinics at the Division of Motor Vehicles in Delaware City and Georgetown could have gone better. Held in January, the events saw enormous turnout and long waits, with some of the attendees not eligible for a vaccine.

State officials have learned from that, he said, noting it can take longer to vaccinate the elderly than other populations.

Another lesson from the past 12 months has been how much messaging matters. Delaware has tried to avoid a “nanny state kind of thing,” Gov. Carney said, emphasizing the importance of consistent and clear messaging.

He’s held weekly briefings, including twice a week for a time, to provide an update on the pandemic. Delawareans have tuned in for the live-streamed sessions, which state officials have sought to use to educate and reassure citizens.

Officials can’t just tell the public to do something without detailing why, the governor explained, noting there will always be some rebels, especially among the younger set. Gov. Carney said he has tried to strictly follow COVID restrictions here so as to set a good example for other Delawareans.

“Sometimes I go to an event that clearly is too many people inside and I just have to get up and leave, because it doesn’t show that you as a leader are taking these restrictions seriously but you’re asking everybody else to,” he said.

Like everyone else, the governor clings to the prospect of celebrating the winter holidays with family members without masks and social distancing. He’s unwilling to say definitively whether that will be the case, however, noting how difficult it has been to anticipate what’s next during the course of the pandemic.

Still, he does believe the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel is in sight.

“It’s been a very difficult year,” he said. “I feel like we’ve turned the corner though.”