I got pneumonia, was it COVID-19?

The pain stabbed deep, really deep, in my left lung. I instinctively knew it wasn’t a cold or the flu. I knew this was going to be a bug that would last, as I like to say, for a week or seven days, whichever comes first.

I shrugged it off the first day and a half, even after the gurgle began. But the whistle was impossible to ignore. Sitting next to me, you could hear it. That Thursday night, it got so loud that it woke me up, several times.

First thing Friday morning, I called my primary care doctor’s office, but same-day appointments are virtually non-existent anymore. The earliest she could squeeze me in was Monday.

So I did what her clerk suggested. I went to an urgent care center in Fort Lauderdale and with a fever, cough and shortness of breath, waited with a bunch of other sick folks for help.

When the doctor listened to my lungs, he stepped back and asked if I’d recently traveled to any country at high-risk for coronavirus. I hadn’t, but I’d been out and about here in South Florida, the gateway to the world. Neither had Florida’s first coronavirus patient — a Manatee County man in his 60s — been to any of those countries. As we all know by now, COVID-19 is highly transmissible through coughing and sneezing.

The clinic’s x-ray machine wasn’t working, so the doctor suggested I go to a hospital emergency room or the clinic’s sister facility a couple miles away. An hours-long ER wait was too much to face, so I drove to the other clinic, shocked by my presumptive diagnosis: pneumonia. How was that possible? I may be “of a certain age,” but I suffer no chronic health conditions.

That evening, the woman who’d taken my vital signs called to confirm I had pneumonia and added another drug to my regimen. I asked to speak to the doctor, but she said he was busy and couldn’t come to the phone. She told me to call my primary care doctor on Monday. I was left to wonder — was I contagious?

Fortunately, the drugs have worked and two weeks later, I am better, though a nagging tickle remains.

But my experience leads me to believe urgent care centers are on the front line of the coronavirus outbreak and I wonder how well they are integrated into the public health response.

On Wednesday, I called the management office of MD Now Urgent Care to ask if the company had been contacted by public health officials about a coordinated response to the outbreak, and whether they’d seen an uptick in people presenting with symptoms. I was told by someone named Justin: “We’re not commenting on that.”

From my vantage point, the public health response to coronavirus remains far too muted.

Sure, state health officials are telling you to wash your hands often, use hand sanitizers, cough into your elbow and stay home if you’re sick.

But what if you get sick with symptoms associated with coronavirus?

Did you know that if you get symptoms like mine, you’re supposed to call the health department before visiting a doctor or hospital? Really? I never would have thought to call the health department. So what, exactly, happens when you call?

I called the Broward Health Department on Tuesday to find out. As the phone recording instructed, I listened carefully to the menu of options that had recently changed, but heard nothing like: “Press here if you suspect you’ve been exposed to the coronavirus.”

I tried to interview the department’s director, Dr. Paula Thaqi, about what happens when sick people call. A spokeswoman asked that I put my questions in writing. I knew I wouldn’t hear back.

The Florida Department of Health is notorious for not talking to the media, including, in the last year, about gaps in school vaccine compliance and fecal matter in water at the beach. Honestly, I don’t recall ever getting a return call from Broward’s health department. The agency responsible for public health in Broward obviously doesn’t count public communication as part of its public charge.

So I called Jaime Caldwell, the president of the South Florida Hospital Association and chair of the Broward County Health Care Coalition, who was good enough to take my call. He said I really needed to talk to Dr. Thaqi. I explained that I had tried, but I never heard back.

“I would think the health department would be reaching out to you, asking for your help in getting this information out, because … they are saying before you go to the doctor’s office, call them and let them know what the issue is. So if you really end up going there, they are ready for you, and can isolate you when you get there.”

So far as he knows, Caldwell said the health department walks patients through a questionnaire that asks about their travel history and the severity of their symptoms. Since 80% of people don’t need the extensive care provided by hospitals, he said health officials would like to keep some number of people away from emergency rooms so they don’t share the virus or clog up the system. He suspects the health department would set up a visitation. Telehealth might be an option. “They’re looking at every option to keep people at home … to try to reduce the possible spread.”

Caldwell did his best, for which I thank him. But I still have questions.

If you’re symptomatic but didn’t visit a foreign country, how does the health department now view that answer?

If you’re symptomatic, what is the health department telling you to do, exactly?

If not the hospital, to what alternative site might the health department direct you to go?

If it happened again tomorrow, I expect I’d wind up back at the urgent care center, with a bunch of other sick folks.