The Keys’ case No. 30 describes her ordeal
Amy Culver knew something was wrong.
It was the cough that began a week ago, a week after she had begun to selfquarantine because she had just returned from Mexico City.
That cough went from bad to worse. Fast.
“You’re holding onto the counter, you’re just afraid you’re going to pass out,” the 55-year-old Key West woman described it on Thursday.
It was the day after her doctor told her she had tested positive for COVID-19, the sometimes deadly disease caused by the coronavirus.
“I’m patient number 30,” she said.
She gave a sample on Friday morning at Dr. John Norris’ downtown Key
West office.
They stick a swab into your nose, she said.
“It goes right up your nose into your eyeball,” Culver said. She found out five days later, which she considers fairly quick, considering the number of patients in Florida.
On Thursday evening, the Florida Department of Health reported that statewide there were 9,008 confirmed positive cases of COVID-19.
Monroe County had 38 confirmed cases, including 19 in Key West. The state reported that 347 people had been tested in Monroe: 38 positive, 228 negative and 81 awaiting results.
Culver announced her diagnosis Thursday in a post on her Facebook page. She made it public to promote awareness of the disease.
“People are not being responsible,” Culver said. “They think it’s not going to touch them. This touches everybody. This is a time to be responsible.”
Culver has lived through plenty of hardship. She lost her husband to suicide years ago.
She now knows the pain of COVID-19. The massive headaches that won’t stop. The high fever that won’t go away.
Culver likened the cough to having glass shards inside her stomach.
She’s said she’s a little stir crazy, joking that moving from couch to bed is like playing chess with herself.
She has a support system. She worries about those who don’t.
“I’m sitting pretty,” she said. “People are dropping off food to me. Publix has been great doing delivery. I want for nothing which is a wonderful thing. A lot of people out there, they do need something. If you haven’t seen your neighbor or someone for a couple of days, call her.”
Culver has no idea where and when she caught the coronavirus. It could have been in Mexico City, she said, or maybe she picked it up when she got home to the condo she had rented out while she was away.
“You could ask Dr. Jack
Norris,” she said. “I did everything right. I selfquarantined. I stayed shut in. I didn’t go out in public. Nothing.”
So we asked. And the doctor agreed she did the right things.
“There’s no way to be
100 percent perfect,” Norris said. “As good as a soul is, as Culver is, there’s no way to be perfect. This is one of those germs that are amazingly infectious.”
If people touch their keys, which have touched the coronavirus, and then their face, they could catch it, Norris said.
Pens are a source of contamination, he said.
“She is a good person who honestly tried to socially distance and probably did 95 percent without realizing she had a breach,” Norris said.
Culver, who for 16 years ran the restaurant Mango’s on Duval Street, along with a catering business, has spent recent years traveling to Africa on humanitarian missions, teaching women business skills.
Culver was raised on another island, Nahant, Massachusetts, which has one square mile of land area. She went to the University of Maine and studied art at the Aix-en-Provence in France.
She’s known in Key West, her home of 30 years, for volunteer work. She was among the first group of locals to work on forming Key West Cares after Hurricane Dorian tore through the Bahamas to send supplies and relief to the region.
Now she’s the one on the receiving end of help.
Gwen Filosa: KeyWestGwen
One cruise crew member has died on the Royal Caribbean-owned Celebrity Infinity ship, the company confirmed to the Miami Herald Thursday.
Two additional crew members have been evacuated “for medical reasons” off the Oasis of the Seas, also owned by Miami-based Royal Caribbean Cruise Line.
Crew members on the Celebrity Infinity, most of whom have been under strict lockdown in their rooms since Saturday, learned of their fellow crew member’s death in a Thursday announcement from the cruise’s leadership.
In interviews with the Herald, employees of the two conronavirus-tagged cruise ships say they haven’t just been kept in guest cabins 24 hours a day — they’ve been kept in the dark by those running the ship.
“We don’t know how long we are here, who they are testing, where we are going,” a crew member on Royal Caribbean’s Oasis of the Seas said. “We know nothing. They aren’t sharing anything with us.”
What the crews of the Oasis and RCCL-owned Celebrity Cruises’ Infinity know is they’ve been under quarantine after confirmed positive cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. They don’t know how many crew members have tested positive. They don’t know when their ship will dock. They don’t know when they’ll be able to go home.
The Oasis sits off Port Everglades. The Infinity sits off Florida’s West Coast.
“All guests on Oasis and Infinity have disembarked, and we are focused on the health and well-being of our crew who are our foremost priority,” Royal Caribbean spokesperson Jonathon Fishman said in a statement to the Herald. “In accordance with our health and safety protocols, crew members who exhibited influenza-like symptoms have been examined by our medical staff and have been asked to selfisolate in their cabins under medical observation.”
Both cruise ships have disembarked passengers in the past weeks, but are still keeping some workers on board as they wait to be repatriated to their countries. While some crew members are in cabins with balconies, others have been trapped inside windowless rooms for at least 10 days, employees told the Herald.
Employees on the Oasis of the Seas said before Saturday, they could gather in the pool and bar areas and roam freely around the ships. Staff on the Celebrity Infinity said the ship had only one “red zone” area to isolate employees exhibiting symptoms.