Remembering March 11, 2020: The day the threat of COVID became real and everything changed

One day, SARS-CoV-2 was somebody else’s problem: the residents of Wuhan, China; the doctors and nurses of northern Italy; the passengers aboard a Diamond Princess cruise ship. The next day, it was here.

That day was March 11, 2020.

That morning, within 60 seconds of the opening bell, the Dow Jones plunged more than 700 points. On Capitol Hill, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, warned Congress that “it’s going to get worse” — then rushed to the White House to confer with President Trump about shutting down travel from Europe. Meanwhile, in Geneva, Switzerland, the World Health Organization finally declared COVID-19 a pandemic, acknowledging that they were “deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity, and by the alarming levels of inaction.”

Spooked for the first time, a previously dismissive Trump addressed the nation about the threat from the Oval Office. Yet minutes later, his remarks were overshadowed by not one but two momentous revelations: that actors Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson had tested positive on set in Australia — and that the NBA, reeling from its own infections, would be the first professional sports league in America to suspend its season.

In quick succession, schools shut down, streets emptied, hospitals filled up with Americans who until that point had been hoping that elbow bumps would keep the virus at bay.

In fact, the virus had already been spreading across the United States for months, and it would be weeks before COVID-19 cases and deaths reached the first of their many harrowing peaks.

But now the threat was real. Everything had changed.

Back in 2021, to mark the one-year anniversary of March 11, 2020, Yahoo News reconstructed the hour-by-hour drama of that day in the voices of those who defined it. The chorus included familiar figures such as Fauci and NBA commissioner Adam Silver, but it focused just as much on the doctors, nurses and ordinary people who shaped America's response to the pandemic. A version of that oral history is below.

March 11, 2020

Dr. Anthony Fauci: It was the most unusual day.

Dr. Barron Lerner, New York internist and medical historian: That morning we had a very important conference at Bellevue [Hospital]. It was the first time that the people who run the clinic talked about putting in a formal protocol for COVID patients. We were told if you’re talking to a patient in your office, and they have any of the symptoms, you need to say to the patient, ‘I have to leave the office now’ and put our protocol into place, which involves immediately putting a mask on the patient and taking the patient to down to an area where they could be tested for COVID. But I don’t think any of us thought that anything like that was going to happen that same day.

9:31 a.m. ET: On Wall Street, stocks open lower amid ongoing fears over the coronavirus. The Dow Jones Industrial Average falls more than 710 points within a minute of the opening bell.

Fauci: I was testifying before the House Oversight Committee. And during that hearing, I started to sound the alarm.

10:06 a.m. ET: Fauci is questioned by Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., chairwoman of the committee, on Capitol Hill:

Maloney: Is the worst yet to come, Dr. Fauci?

Fauci: Yes, it is.

Maloney: Can you elaborate?

Fauci: We will see more cases, and things will get worse than they are right now. How much worse will depend on our ability to do two things: to contain the influx of people who are infected coming from the outside and the ability to contain and mitigate within our own country. Bottom line, it’s going to get worse.

Fauci: I knew it was not going to be received well [because of] vibrations you get from the White House that they don't particularly like you talking about things that are on the one hand true, but on the other hand, alarming. But I just did it.

12:26 p.m. ET: The World Health Organization declares COVID-19 a pandemic. Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, World Health Organization director-general, makes the announcement at a press briefing in Geneva:

“In the days and weeks ahead, we expect to see the number of cases, the number of deaths, and the number of affected countries climb even higher. WHO has been assessing this outbreak around the clock and we are deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity, and by the alarming levels of inaction. We have therefore made the assessment that COVID-19 can be characterized as a pandemic.”

Olivia Troye, national security adviser to Vice President Mike Pence: In the White House, we knew to expect that announcement, which led to some internal discussions. “OK, we’ve been downplaying the case numbers. The president has been sort of vocal about it not being a big deal. And the cases were going to go away.” but then we have this announcement coming from the WHO that’s flat-out saying we have a serious problem on our hands. And this is global.”

Sandra Lindsay, intensive care nurse at Long Island Jewish Medical Center who later became one of the first people in the U.S. to receive a COVID vaccine: Of course we were scared. We knew it was only a matter of time before it came to us.

12:30 p.m. ET: On Wall Street, the Dow sinks more than 1,400 points following the WHO announcement. In Washington, Trump, Pence and members of the White House coronavirus task force meet about restricting travel from Europe.

Troye: The European travel restrictions, that was not an easy decision. It was very, very significantly debated, probably for the two weeks beforehand, because there were some very strong opinions in the room about the impact that would have on the economy. I remember [Treasury] Secretary [Steve] Mnuchin being very upset off the top.

At the meeting, a decision was made that the U.S. will impose a ban on travel from Europe.

Troye: The vice president was initially going to do the press conference [announcing the travel restrictions], and I had been prepping for him. But then we were told that the president would be doing the address … and we waited. It was supposed to be at 4 p.m. that day. It just kept getting pushed.

Noah Bierman, a Los Angeles Times reporter who was on White House pool duty that day: There started to be rumors throughout the morning that Trump might address the country because there was all this building pressure. It was still being decided whether he was going to do it.

Troye: Eventually it turns into an Oval Office address at 9:00 p.m.

Lerner: In the middle of the afternoon, I had a roomful of patients. And I called in a patient of Asian descent. She had had a fever 10 days before with a cough. Since then, she had been markedly short of breath. I thought, ‘Oh, God, this is exactly what we were told this morning.’ ‘You could have COVID,’ I told her. ‘I have to leave the room now.’

3:39 p.m. ET: Trump addresses reporters during a meeting with business leaders in the Cabinet Room:

“The numbers from a week ago were great and from two days ago were great, but now we’re hitting a patch. And we’re going to have to do something with respect to getting this — getting rid of this virus as quickly as possible and as safely as possible. So we’ll be making, most likely, a statement. I’ll be making a statement later on tonight as to what I’ve decided to do and what our country will be doing.”

4 p.m. ET: The Dow Jones Industrial Average closes down 1,465 points, or 5.9 percent, sending it more than 20 percent below its high from February and into a bear market.

4:31 p.m. ET: The NCAA announces that fans will not be allowed to attend its upcoming basketball tournament. (The NCAA later canceled March Madness altogether.)

4:33 p.m. ET: Joe Biden’s presidential campaign announces the cancellation of upcoming in-person rallies, and makes plans to hold virtual events.

The same afternoon, the White House coronavirus task force announces a Community Mitigation Strategy for New Rochelle, N.Y., one of the first COVID-19 hot spots in the U.S. — effectively creating a containment zone for the virus.

Noah Bramson, then mayor of New Rochelle: To see National Guardsmen and National Guardswomen with masks and, in some cases, hazmat suits, it was the kind of image that you would associate with a dystopian science fiction movie, and not something you expect to see in your local park.

And yet I do think even that may have been, in some sense, beneficial to the national experience, because it helped to underline the gravity of the situation that we were facing. That sense of shock may have been necessary to pull people into this new reality and achieve a recognition that our lives were going to be significantly different for an extended period of time. And indeed it wasn’t long after that the entire country became a containment zone.

8:10 p.m. ET: The Utah Jazz are in Oklahoma City for a game against the Thunder that is scheduled to tip off. But there is a mysterious delay.

Adam Silver, NBA commissioner: Rudy Gobert from the Utah Jazz had some symptoms that seemed flu-like, and under the auspices of the Oklahoma City Health authorities, he was administered a COVID test. Around 7:45 on the evening of March 11, I was heading home from the office in New York City. It’s not a very long ride. I’d just gotten into a car when I received a call from our general counsel at the NBA. And he said, we just got a test result for Rudy Gobert — and he’s COVID positive.

Eric Walden, a Salt Lake City Tribune reporter who covers the Utah Jazz but was in Salt Lake City attending a professional wrestling event with his son: So I’m in this arena with a few thousand other people, and my wife texted me. She’s like, “Hey, I’ve got the game on the TV and it hasn’t started yet. There's something weird going on.”

Silver: The immediate issue was, should we cancel the game now? Gobert was not in the arena. He hadn't stepped into the arena. He'd only been around his teammates the day before. The game was scheduled to tip off around 7 o'clock local time. So that was going to be in 15 minutes.

Then I saw another call on my cellphone. It was from the principal owner of the Oklahoma City Thunder. And he said, “I've just heard that there's a positive case from the other team. What are we going to do here?” He was standing on the court, and he said, ‘You realize the players are on the floor.’ There were also roughly 19,000 people in his arena. We made an immediate decision to have the players return to their locker rooms so we could have at least a few minutes to figure out what we were doing.

I think I had one more conversation with our office to see whether the Oklahoma City Health authorities were going to direct us not to play. And within that five-, 10-minute period, we didn’t receive any directives. So at that point, I made a decision that we needed to call that game and then work with the team to announce to the assembled crowd that they needed to exit the arena.

9:02 p.m. ET: President Trump announces the ban on travel from Europe in a televised address from the Oval Office:

“We are at a critical time in the fight against the virus. We made a life-saving move with early action on China. Now we must take the same action with Europe. We will not delay. I will never hesitate to take any necessary steps to protect the lives, health and safety of the American people. I will always put the well-being of America first.

“We have seen dramatically fewer cases of the virus in the United States than are now present in Europe. The European Union failed to take the same precautions and restrict travel from China and other hot spots. As a result, a large number of new clusters in the United States were seeded by travelers from Europe.

“If we are vigilant — and we can reduce the chance of infection, which we will — we will significantly impede the transmission of the virus. The virus will not have a chance against us. No nation is more prepared or more resilient than the United States."

Troye: I remember being a little frustrated, because I was like, "This isn't a foreign virus problem. This is a global problem that is going to impact a lot of Americans."

9:08 p.m. ET: As Trump was finishing his address in Washington, in Australia, a half a world away, Tom Hanks announced via Instagram that he and his wife, Rita Wilson, tested positive for COVID-19:

“Hello, folks. @ritawilson and I are down here in Australia. We felt a bit tired, like we had colds, and some body aches. Rita had some chills that came and went. Slight fevers too. To play things right, as is needed in the world right now, we were tested for the Coronavirus, and were found to be positive. Well, now. What to do next? The medical officials have protocols that must be followed. We Hanks’ will be tested, observed, and isolated for as long as public health and safety requires. Not much more to it than a one-day-at-a-time approach, no?”

Troye: I was sitting on the couch next to my husband with my dogs next to me when the news broke about Tom Hanks. I've probably watched every movie that he's been in. I like what he stands for as an actor. And I remember being really sad and worried, because I thought to myself, "You know, this virus doesn't have any boundaries. It doesn’t matter who you are, how famous you are, whether you're an everyday person, a famous actor or famous politician. We’re all going to be exposed to this.”

9:27 p.m. ET: The Athletic breaks the news that Rudy Gobert has tested positive for coronavirus.

Walden: Suddenly everything became fast-moving. I sit down next to my son. I start looking around. And then I realize I’ve been on a road trip with these guys for a week. Now I’m in an arena with thousands of other people. And I’m like, “I might have it. I might have COVID. We need to go home.” And so we booked it out of there.

Silver: At that point, it didn’t make sense to stop games that were in progress. But we had one other game that evening that hadn’t started yet, and that was out in Sacramento. The fans were already in the building. We then learn that one of the officials who was scheduled to work the game in Sacramento had officiated at a Utah Jazz game earlier in the week. So that made the decision relatively straightforward. We canceled the game and announced we were now on what we were calling “a hiatus.”

9:32 p.m. ET: The NBA officially suspends the season in the wake of Gobert’s positive test.

Silver: I remember it being a very emotional [day] for me. Tens of thousands of jobs are dependent on this league. I ended up sitting in a car outside my apartment building for about 20 minutes on the phone. I was late to have dinner with my wife. I walked into our apartment, and I said, “You're not going to believe what just happened.“

Lerner: I wouldn’t have said, watching the TV at the time, ‘Oh, it’s interesting that the same day I got infected with COVID-19 was the day everything changed.’ I wasn't thinking that. But there did seem to be this momentum, like, ‘Oh my God, this is really happening.’ You almost felt like you were starting to go downhill in a barrel.

Bierman: I just remember thinking after Trump’s speech that these pop-cultural events were going to matter a whole lot more than what the president said. Normal people care more about Tom Hanks and the NBA than politics.

Lerner: It’s very hard to mobilize people for a theoretical pandemic. And everybody, myself included, was hanging on to an optimistic thread that this wasn’t gonna be so bad. But by the end of that day, you couldn't really say that anymore. Enough things were happening. The world was changing.