A New Ipswich man who tested positive for the COVID-19 coronavirus is recovering at home this week.
Jalen Rines, 25, of New Ipswich visited Florida with his family the week of Feb. 21-29, flying into Palm Beach and making a stop in Orlando before returning home via Logan Airport.
Rines said he was fine and symptom-free for about two weeks after he returned to New Hampshire, but on Friday, March 13, he started suffering from what felt like the common cold – a light headache and cough and mild fatigue.
“Basically I had the cold come on and that’s when it clicked,” Rines said, “and I knew I was starting to get sick.”
By Sunday night, Rines said his lungs started to feel “full of junk,” and his shortness of breath and fatigue intensified.
“Even going up the stairs would wind me,” Rines said.
His symptoms were checking a few of the coronavirus boxes, but not all of them, as he didn’t have a fever; nonetheless, he visited the Convenient MD urgent care facility in Nashua to get tested for what he assumed was another bout of bronchitis, which he’d suffered in the past.
At this point, the nation’s efforts to suppress the coronavirus had intensified greatly from a few weeks prior, as evidenced at the urgent care facility.
“They wouldn’t let you go into the building,” Rines said. “I was in the parking lot and told them what was going on. They checked my temperature and vitals; everything was good, then they asked me when I traveled.”
Once the staff knew he’d been in Florida during the last week of February, they told him he needed to be tested for the flu – and for the coronavirus.
“Basically they take a swab and go right up your nose,” Rines said. “Put it up there and had it sit there for 10 seconds.”
The turnaround on the test is four to five days, so Rines left with an inhaler to treat his shortness of breath and returned home to wait it out.
His symptoms all but went away – “After two days of my lungs feeling like crap, it was basically over,” Rines said – but a few days later, he got a call from the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services telling him that he’d indeed tested positive for the coronavirus.
“I thought if I had it, I would definitely know,” Rines said, “but it just varies so far that any little sickness you have could possibly be it.”
As of Monday, there were 101 cases of COVID-19 confirmed in New Hampshire On Monday, the state announced New Hampshire’s first coronavirus casualty – a man over the age of 60 in Hillsborough County.
New Ipswich Fire Chief Merideth Lund said she learned about Rines’ exposure through a Facebook post.
“We did not get a call from the state, which kind of surprised me,” Lund said. “I’m hoping that there’s a better way from the state to give us a heads-up.”
Rines’ wife and two children are all operating under the assumption that they also have the virus, though they weren’t tested; all are on a home self-quarantine for seven days, and after that period – plus two days of being entirely symptom-free – Rines said he expects a visit from HHS to confirm that they are no longer contagious before he can head back to work at his job as foreman at Patriot Scaffolding.
“What I do is go to work, make money and provide for my family,” Rines said, “but now I’m at the point where, is it really worth it to put your loved ones at risk?”
People who may have come in contact with Rines recently are urged to self-quarantine for 14 days and reach out to emergency personnel for instructions. New Ipswich does not currently have anyone serving as Emergency Management Director, and Lund said that she and Police Chief Tim Carpenter have stepped up to fill that vacant position. Lund said that at least one of her firefighters is under quarantine right now and that the department has instituted strict protocols to keep their members healthy.
“As we start to lose members, we have no one to replace them with,” Lund said. “So we have to be really careful.”
Like many Americans, Rines was skeptical of how serious the spread of coronavirus was in the early stages.
“At first I thought it was hogwash, like they were blowing it out of proportion,” Rines said. “It’s definitely a real thing.”
Rines is a baseball coach at Mascenic Regional High School as well as an alumnus and fan, and had planned on attending the Vikings’ basketball state championship game which was scheduled for the 13th, the night his symptoms revealed themselves.
“That was the night that I started feeling bad, so there’s a really good chance that I would have affected some people,” Rines said. “There’s people that are walking around completely fine that have it and it’s like, what do you do?”
Rines said he’s recovering well, with just a light cough remaining, but that it’s clear that others, like the elderly or those with preexisting health conditions, might not fare so well, so stopping the spread is crucial.
“I just want people to know that you could have it,” Rines said. “Even if you feel fine, you could have it and you don’t want to affect loved ones…It’s not about me, it’s about the people that aren’t healthy, that have problems, it’s about those people that it’s really going to affect if they get it.”
Lund said the news brought the reality of the coronavirus epidemic home to the people of New Ipswich who may have thought themselves isolated enough as it was.
“People thought ‘Oh, we live in a little town in the middle of New Hampshire, it’s not going to affect us,’ ” Lund said. “It’s going to affect everyone.”