Home » Latest » U.S. » News correspondent speaks out after testing positive for COVID-19

News correspondent speaks out after testing positive for COVID-19

13

InfoSearched 95 0 U.S.

9.5

SaveSavedRemoved 0

A correspondent who covered the outbreak becomes part of the story.

Kaylee Hartung spent days inside the eye of the country’s first major coronavirus cluster, reporting from Kirkland, Washington, on the outbreak tied to the Life Care Center nursing facility. Days after wrapping that assignment and flying home to Los Angeles, the ABC News correspondent tested positive for COVID-19 herself. She’s now telling that story live, from isolation, on the same network she was reporting for.

• Kaylee Hartung, an ABC News correspondent based in Los Angeles, tested positive for COVID-19 after covering the outbreak centered on the Life Care Center nursing facility in Kirkland, Washington.
• ABC News President James Goldston confirmed the diagnosis in an internal memo to staff, noting a Los Angeles bureau member on the Seattle coverage team had contracted the virus and entered quarantine.
• Hartung described her symptoms progressing from fatigue and mild body aches to headaches, congestion, and a loss of taste and smell, while ABC News Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton offered context on the virus’s typical progression.

The Kirkland Assignment

Hartung was on the ground in Kirkland covering what had become the nation’s first significant coronavirus hot zone, a cluster centered on the Life Care Center nursing home where dozens of residents and staff had already fallen ill. It was the kind of story crews across the country were being sent to chase down in early March 2020 — and it put reporters, producers, and camera operators in close proximity to a virus still poorly understood outside of hospital wards. Hartung flew back to Los Angeles once the assignment wrapped, unaware she’d carried the virus home with her.

ABC News’ Internal Response

ABC News President James Goldston addressed the diagnosis directly in a memo circulated to staff, confirming that a Los Angeles bureau member who had worked the Seattle coverage had tested positive and gone into quarantine. The disclosure put a name and a face on a risk newsrooms were only beginning to grapple with: that the journalists sent to document outbreaks were themselves exposed to the same conditions driving the story. It’s a dynamic that would echo across the industry as more markets moved toward the kind of restrictions covered in several states imposing stricter coronavirus restrictions as infections continue to spike.

Hartung’s Account From Isolation

Speaking live from her home in Los Angeles, Hartung walked through how the illness unfolded for her — not with the dramatic respiratory distress dominating early coverage out of Seattle and Kirkland, but with a slower, subtler onset. It began with fatigue and mild body aches, the kind she might have chalked up to a demanding travel schedule, before headaches and congestion set in. Then came a symptom that stood out even then: a loss of taste and smell.

It started as fatigue and body aches. Then came the headaches and the congestion — and at some point I realized I couldn’t taste or smell anything at all.

Hartung’s case remained mild throughout, without the severe respiratory complications that were filling headlines from the outbreak she’d just covered. That distinction mattered on a broadcast trying to help viewers understand the range of how the virus actually presents, rather than only the worst-case scenarios.

The Medical Picture, According to Dr. Ashton

ABC News Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton joined the coverage to walk through the typical arc of viral symptoms Hartung described and why self-isolation protocols mattered so much in a case like hers. With testing capacity still catching up to demand in mid-March 2020, Ashton’s on-air breakdowns of symptom progression and quarantine practice were filling a gap for viewers trying to figure out what an actual case looked like day to day — guidance that dovetailed with the broader push, detailed in reporting on officials contracting the coronavirus, toward stricter isolation habits inside institutions handling public-facing work.

Hartung stayed in isolation at home in Los Angeles as she recovered, continuing to file for Good Morning America and other ABC News broadcasts from her living room rather than a studio. For a correspondent who’d flown to Kirkland to document a virus most of the country still hadn’t encountered firsthand, reporting on it from her own quarantine made her one of the first working journalists in America to turn the outbreak story into a first-person one.