SEATTLE — It was supposed to be a quiet Saturday.

Sydney Brownstone was in the newsroom at The Seattle Times, monitoring the police scanner for any activity and planning to spend the day, Feb. 29, working on an upcoming article.

Then came an email saying someone had died at the Life Care Center of Kirkland, an assisted-living facility about 20 minutes to the northeast. More people were sick. It was the coronavirus.

Journalists began streaming into the newsroom. The disease had already been on people’s minds: The paper’s health reporter, Ryan Blethen, had started reading up on the coronavirus when the outbreak began in China, figuring that if it came to this country, it could hit the West Coast first. In January, when the first person in the United States got sick — in nearby Snohomish County — the newsroom began preparing, making a spreadsheet listing all members of the staff and what they would need to work from home.

Soon after the news broke on Feb. 29, the staff realized that this wasn’t just a one-off story. This was an outbreak, and The Times was at the epicenter.