In ways, 2020 and the first half of 2021 were normal times for UT Health San Antonio. Tomorrow’s health care professionals were educated and graduated, and new, highly qualified students were recruited. Research labs were abuzz with the widest range of scientific inquiry and discovery. Thousands of patients were seen, treated, healed.
But those darkest days of COVID-19, of course, were normal for no one. The novel coronavirus killed millions of people worldwide, devastated economies, shattered dreams and broke hearts.
And yet, said William L. Henrich, MD, MACP, president of UT Health San Antonio, COVID-19 also magnified the courage, the heroics, the inclination to run toward the fire, to go beyond, that marks the healing professions and the mission of UT Health San Antonio.
“What I’m most proud of is we’ve saved thousands of lives by virtue of what our health care providers have done, and we’ll save thousands more by what we’ll continue to do,” Henrich said. “That ‘north star’ of saving lives is our vocation, our vision.”
And it’s a story that continues to this day, three years after the first known cases that forever changed the world of health care and of the entire health care workforce.
