COVID 19: Five years on

At 8 a.m. on March 13, 2020, a state of emergency went into effect in Delaware as a response to the early stages of what would become the COVID-19 pandemic.

WDEL News sat down for a lengthy interview with then Governor, now Mayor, John Carney to reflect back on the initial weeks of how Delaware handled the onset of the coronavirus.

Here are excerpts:

WDEL: You attended the St. Mark's Sports Hall of Fame induction on February 21st. The state of emergency went into effect on March 13th. What happened in that three week period that prompted that response? You were quoted at the time that "we expected to get some positive cases," but do you recall was it a build up or did something jump out and say 'we've got to do something.'

Mayor John Carney: My recollection was it was like the drop of a hat, it happened in an instant, maybe a day. We were getting reports out of the West Coast that this virus had infected people who had traveled overseas and to China, and there was a lot written in the couple months leading up to that about this bird flu virus out of Wuhan, China. We were running the government and going through our daily business and all of a sudden we had a case here at the University of Delaware. The transmission came from a science based conference up in Princeton, New Jersey. And so the next day on March 12th we declared a state of emergency [that went into effect on the 13th] and by the end of March, 2020, pretty much had shut down most of the state really without a lot of knowledge about what the threat was, but we knew from what we were hearing from the public health officials that this was a very serious virus that was approaching pandemic stages around the world. And the best protection was to keep people separated from one another so they didn't contract the virus and become very sick. It was pretty scary. We didn't know a lot about it. We were following the science such as it was, from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), our partners in the federal government. That was a really important interaction that we had. 

WDEL: Who did you rely on in those early days? You had said 'we're building the airplane as we're going down the runway.'

Carney: That's certainly the truth. We were learning as we went. There had to be a certain amount of humility in it. You know in a state of emergency the legislative side of the government kinds of shuts down and all the authority is in the executive branch. We had a good conversation among the governors. A lot of really horrific scenes coming out of New York City, Governor Cuomo was the governor at the time, really stood up and took control. A lot of communication in our region with Governor Wolf in particular in Pennsylvania, Governor Hogan in Maryland, Governor Murphy across the river in New Jersey. My position as governor, and governors across the country, really were the only ones who saw the full picture. Public health people they wanted to do this and shut down things down mostly; the business community wanted to keep things open; schools wanted to be shut down; and so, we really had to try and figure it out and strike the right balance. I think that's an important word in terms of public health and public safety and keeping our economy running, getting as much teaching as possible with our children in schools. That's one of the big problems, one of the big regrets that I have is that we weren't able to keep children in school. We learned they weren't at as great a risk as adults, particularly our senior population. Of course we didn't know that at the outset. Teachers legitimately were very concerned, they've seen how flus and bugs run through a classroom and through the school and so they legitimately were worried about that. And we struggled. We closed the schools for two weeks, we thought, in early March and then we didn't open them again until the following school year. It just was a battle we didn't win, and we're seeing the effects of it with the lost learning that children had.

WDEL: Was there a point in time where something, a data report or a personal story, that hit you between the eyes and made you say 'this is bad.'

Carney: Really there were so many of them. We had regular calls with the chambers of commerce, with the Restaurant Association, with the mayors in towns across our state, with the hospitals, and in one of those conversations the hospitals would give a report from how many people were in the hospital sick, how many tested positive for COVID, and so we had some sense of where the hotspots were. The big hotspot early on was in the southwest corner of the state in Seaford and Laurel. We had some employees at the poultry plants come up really sick, in fact, one young Hispanic male died in Georgetown at home, didn't go to the hospital, was very sick, and we knew that was a problem, and so we put a lot of effort into safety around those poultry plants. As it turned out the infection rates and fatalities in that Hispanic community in our state were much lower than the general population. I mean there were stories after stories. Once we got into vaccinations, remember we had to set up testing sites, and then we had to set up vaccination sites, and we had to set up areas where we determined the virus was spreading. We had a vaccination site there at one of our DMV facilities outside of Delaware City and it was really cold that day and the hand held laptop computers they were using froze up and the line went out onto Route 1. It was at a time when only citizens 65 and older were eligible and so you had a lot of elderly people in cars and not able to relieve themselves and it was just a complete disaster. So we learned. We had big sites at Dover Downs that were quite successful. It was very challenging. We had a great team. We are lucky in Delaware that I was able to get on a weekly call with all the mayors, the chambers of commerce, all the hospitals, and really sort out the opinions of each and the needs of each and try to strike the right balance in our emergency orders.

WDEL: Did you feel like a juggler where somebody kept feeding more balls into the routine?

Carney: That's a good image and my job was to make sure they didn't hit the ground, right? And we didn't get it all right. We learned as we went. One of the big deficiencies from the public health folks was that initially there was mixed messaging around wearing of masks. As it turned out the virus was most transmitted through airborne particles and so mask wearing was one of the most protective measures that you could have. And there was some feeling that if people touched or adjusted their mask they would get the virus on their fingers. Surfaces, you know, everybody was cleaning surfaces, turned out there wasn't much transmission happening with surfaces. When we learned something like that we tried to shift courses and move in a different direction. The most important element was people having the trust in me as the governor and our team that we were trying to do the right thing, we were following the science. 

WDEL: Good Irishman, you shut the restaurants down on the 16th of March.

Carney: I'll always be remembered for closing the bars on Saint Patty's Day, the Irish governor at the time that shut down the bars. And the reason was, and again it's a practical thing, they were closed in Maryland and we were getting a tremendous influx over the line. Bars are not very good venues for keeping people separate and cognizant of their public health when they're drinking on Saint Patty's Day. That was something I laugh about today but it wasn't very funny on March 17th, 2020.

WDEL: Were you surprised by any of the backlash you got along the way?

Carney: I was very disappointed in the lawsuit from the clergy. The fact of the matter was that I was getting bishops and pastors and reverends, leaders of various religious denominations, calling me and telling me to do something because their most ardent followers wanted to be in church every day. And that was just a dangerous thing particularly a lot of them were elderly women like my mother. I had some explaining to do with my mother. She was a daily church attendee and wanted to be able to do that, and so I had to explain to her why that could be deadly for her as an almost 90-year old at the time. (Editor's note: Mrs. Carney passed away of natural causes in January, 2025) It's one of those things that I guess happens when you're in this business as a public official. 

WDEL: Let's talk about your Mom. You mentioned her often in your weekly updates. How much did her health, as representative for other senior citizens, play into your decision making?

Carney: I think it's always the case in positions like as a governor, particularly in a state of emergency you've got to convince people to do things they don't want to do. The best way to do it is not to give them the science so much, that's part of it, but to tell stories that they can relate to. I really felt like the conversations I had with my mother, my focus on doing things that would protect her health and wellness and life for that matter, I think translates with people. Most people have elderly parents or grandparents that they can relate to and if you have something like that to help get your message across that this is why we're doing it, that helps, and I think it did help. 

WDEL: Going back to the early days (of the pandemic), did you feel like what was happening in New York, north Jersey, was a tidal wave coming this way?

Carney: I was definitely worried about it. Particularly since this region is so densely populated from Greater New York City to Greater Washington, D.C. We're right in the middle. We had some back and forth with my friend Governor Murphy over in New Jersey where he put a restriction onto travelers into his state that they had to quarantine for 14 days. One of the biggest issues that we learned, and it was a real problem, was that so many people that were COVID positive were not symptomatic, so they didn't know they were sick. And we had a lot of community spread because people that had the virus didn't know it. And that's why the 14-day quarantine was imposed. Those kinds of things we tried to work out to the best we can. Governor Murphy, Governor Wolf, Governor Hogan, they were trying to do the right thing for their populations, and I was trying to do the right thing for ours. The job that I had to get compliance was easier because we do have the ability to get all the leaders of chambers, all the mayors in a conference call, all the hospitals, we're just not that big. We did have the press conferences where I could get out there and explain what we were doing, we could have our public health officials, we could give them the numbers from the hospitals, and I think it created a sense of safety or confidence that we were trying to do the right thing. And it's really important when we got something a little bit wrong and we had to change courses that we explained that. I think that built trust by just being out there and saying 'we weren't exactly right on this one.'

WDEL: Five years later, would you do anything different?

Carney: Yea, I think the thing that most troubles me is the effect on learning in schools. I don't know if there's anything we could have done more effectively there. I do know it's had an impact on those children who were in those early age groups particularly as they're learning how to read, from first grade to third or fourth, in the early elementary school years. I do regret that a little bit, but by and large I think we tried to our best. 

Five years on, it is an opportunity once again to thank all the public health officials, all the law enforcement officials, everybody who put in place the executive orders that we made from the Governor's Office, all the mayors who were in office at that time, and lastly the people of Delaware, the great people of our state and our City of Wilmington, just kind of trying to follow what we were asking them to do, to do what we were asking them to do, to listen to our explanations, and I think at the end of the day we ended up saving lives. We ended up protecting people from contracting a very deadly virus.

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