New York area's 'patient zero' says coronavirus 'wasn't on my mind’ — until it almost killed him.
When Lawrence Garbuz got sick in February, he thought he just had a cough. But Garbuz had coronavirus, which left him in a coma and earned him the title of the New York area's"patient zero."
In an exclusive interview with Savannah Guthrie that aired Monday on"TODAY," Garbuz spoke about his experience, saying the disease that almost killed him"really wasn't on my mind" as he was falling ill. Garbuz, 50, was sick in February before the outbreak was on many American's radar, including his own, and weeks before New York took strict measures to prevent the spread of the disease.
“I’m a lawyer. I sit at a desk all day,” he said. “I think at the time we were sort of focusing on individuals who had maybe traveled internationally, something that I had not done.” But his case, one of the first in the New York-area, sparked a community outbreak in his town, suburban New Rochelle,which shut down schools and places of worship before the rest of the state was under stay-at-home orders. Eventually, Garbuz’ home state of New York became the hardest hit in the U.S., with almost 340,000 of the country’s more than 1,300,000 cases, including more than 27,000 deaths.
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