TOLEDO, Ohio — One year ago Monday - on March 15, 2020 - bars and restaurants were ordered to close for dine-in orders in Ohio, with gyms, salons and other businesses soon following suit.
Looking back to March 2020, officials never expected we'd still be battling this virus.
"I knew we were going to be in it for the long haul, but I think we all kind thought, 'OK, we're going to do contact tracing, we're going to get people quarantined, we're going to do some things to keep the disease at bay for awhile,'" Toledo-Lucas County Health Commissioner Eric Zgodzinski said
While the closures seemed intense and almost unnecessary for some people at the time, Dr. Brian Kaminski with ProMedica said he anticipated the shutdown.
"There was quite a bit of lead up, at least from my individual perspective, and we really knew that a shutdown or some form of restriction was coming," Kaminski said.
Reflecting on this past year, health officials hope community members realize how this pandemic impacted everyone differently, but with an end in sight, it is all becoming a part of history.