February 26 marks one year since the first case of the covid-19 coronavirus arrived in Norway – Troms and Finnmark

A bitter wind blew through the streets of Tromsø on February 26, a year ago. As usual in winter, the city was filled with thousands of tourists who wanted to see snow, northern lights and whales.

At the town hall in central Tromsø, Mayor Gunnar Wilhelmsen was at a dinner with, among others, the rector of the Arctic University of UiT Norway. City Chief Physician Kathrine Kristoffersen was at a business meeting.

The virus they were talking about had been discovered in China around the New Year. At this time, the World Health Organization was able to report 80,200 infections worldwide and 2,700 deaths. Most of them in China.

But the virus was closing in on Norway now.

Italy had received more than 300 corona-infected people, including a Norwegian student. Ten people were confirmed dead. Cases of infection were reported in Austria, Switzerland and Croatia. In Sweden, a man in his 30s had tested positive in Gothenburg.

– We’ll probably get the first case here in a month maximum, Kristoffersen replied.

But one of the passengers who had landed at Tromsø airport the previous weekend had arrived from Wuhan. The Chinese city where the pandemic began.

The lump in the stomach

At the Tromsø city hall, the municipal chief ended the meeting when the phone rang. Around the same time, Mayor Gunnar Wilhelmsen’s phone rang.

The passenger who came from Wuhan this weekend tested negative before the flight to Tromsø left. But now they had the results of a posttest.

Norway had received its first crown case. And Tromsø was the first municipality to have the pandemic cared for in its lap.

City Chief Physician Kathrine Kristoffersen recalls how she reacted.

– I thought that was the starting shot. Now we have a lot to do in the future.

2009 pandemic plan

A few weeks earlier, the World Health Organization had declared the new coronavirus a global health crisis.

However, at this time there was still a lot of uncertainty about the extent of the virus.

Norwegian health authorities knew that the virus was significantly more contagious and led to more hospital admissions than the common flu virus. Little was known about the course of the disease and the treatment.

– We saw the virus getting closer and closer to Europe and we realized that it would reach Norway at some point, says UNN communications manager Hilde Annie Pettersen Kvalvik.

At the largest hospital in northern Norway, preparations had already started in January. But there’s still a lot to do.

The hospital’s pandemic plan had last been used during the swine flu in 2009 and had not been fully revised since.

– We had probably imagined that it would be the capital and eastern Norway that would be affected first. So we were surprised that we were the ones who had the first case of infection, says Kvalvik.

Full emergency mode

Back at city hall, the alarm had gone off and the municipal leadership had fully embraced crisis preparedness mode.

There, the management was preparing for the worst case scenario. They worked hard.

“We had understood for a while that it was going to happen, but we didn’t know how much time we had on ourselves,” says Kristoffersen.

“Fortunately” there had been a false alarm two weeks earlier, when two Swedes had received a false positive test result.

– So we had already had a kind of dress rehearsal and we were not completely naked, says Wilhelmsen.

It had been several weeks since they established an emergency preparedness council. The organization of infection control work was also discussed.

But despite close cooperation with national health authorities, no one was left with any conclusions and there was a lot of uncertainty.

Espen Nakstad from the Norwegian Health Directorate says there were many questions about how the health service should treat infected people.

– For example, we did not know if it made sense to isolate people at home or if they would get so sick that they should be in the hospital. We had many such discussions, he says.

In Tromsø, the infection control plan was obsolete many years ago. Both the personnel planning, the corona phone, the testing center, and the infection tracking team had to be in place.

– If an accident occurs, there are a number of things that must be done. But we have experience with that, we had absolutely no experience with this. So it was special, says Wilhelmsen.

– We groped a lot at first.

– I shrugged a little when I said that.

In Oslo, the National Institute of Public Health prepared for a national press conference on the coronavirus. It was unclear whether they would mention Tromsø.

But in a sub-sentence it was said that the infected lived in northern Norway.

With the mayor and municipal chief at the helm, a press conference was planned in Tromsø that same evening. Together they discussed how to convey this to the population in the best possible way.

The Tromsø municipal chief had little experience with such large press conferences. It was a great body of press that met her.

– Before the press conference, I thought I had to be careful about the way he spoke due to privacy concerns.

Kathrine Kristoffersen was the first woman out. She explained the picture of the disease to the infected person. That the person had not been symptom free for a long time. To be considered so that the person had not been contagious on their trip to Tromsø.

But on a question from NRK journalist Sveinung Åsali, he failed.

– I just dropped it, and I shrugged a little when I said that. But I think it really didn’t do much, says Kristoffersen.

NRK has tried to contact the woman who became the first to test positive for COVID-19 in Norway. She doesn’t want to comment.

The ship that turned

The next few days, weeks and months should be hectic for Kathrine Kristoffersen and the rest of the township apparatus. The municipality of Tromsø has not only had to deal with coronary heart disease in the population. In July, Hurtigruten’s ship MS “Roald Amundsen” docked in the city with an infection on board.

Also, Tromsø is a port called IHR. Along with Bergen and Oslo, the port of Tromsø will be equipped to receive ships with a lot of corona infection on board. Therefore, several ships, both Norwegian and foreign, have docked in Tromsø with infected people on board.

– I must admit that sometimes I have felt tired. Some nights I went to bed at two and got up around four, he says.

She tells of nights when she woke up in the middle of the night because she had an idea or something she had to remember to do.

– Then there was no point in going back to bed and sleeping, so I cycled to work and started what I was going to do. The head was on the move, she says.

But she still remembers the sentiment that settled with her on February 26, a year ago.

– It was the experience of great responsibility.

The next day, the cruise ship “Saga Sapphire” was heading to Tromsø, but the captain decided to turn around.

The coronavirus had reached Tromsø and Norway.