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SAN JOSE – The Christmas Day coronavirus outbreak at Kaiser Permanente San Jose continued to spread on Tuesday – and hospital workers weren’t the only ones falling ill.
For the first time, 15 patients were added to the growing list of infected people on Tuesday after an employee walked through the emergency department in an inflatable tree costume on Dec. 25 may have been a super spreader, announced the Santa Clara County Public Health Department.
The number of positive COVID-19 cases also rose among Kaiser employees to 77 on Tuesday, from 60 last week, the county said. A worker, a receptionist, died about a week after Christmas, although Kaiser did not say exactly when.
Regarding the new figures released on Tuesday, Kaiser Permanente only said that “we are trying to validate the figures provided by the county”.
The news comes after the county fined Kaiser $ 43,000 last week for failing to immediately notify those responsible for the 43 original cases he made public more than a week later – imposing a fine of $ 1,000 for each case.
Several agencies are investigating the outbreak, including the State Department of Public Health and Cal / OSHA and Santa Clara County. In a press release in early January, Kaiser suggested that a well-meaning employee spreading holiday cheer was perhaps the source. The woman in the costume had no symptoms at the time but tested positive shortly after.
Coronavirus experts say it’s possible the person in the suit could have been an unconscious super spreader – most people are at their most contagious before showing symptoms and the ventilator in the inflatable suit could have easily evacuated and spread the virus.
But with hospital staff forced to wear masks and some workers who started work later in the day also falling ill, many questions remain as to whether there could have been another source of the disease. epidemic.
A patient who spoke to the news agency said she was released from the emergency department on December 24, the day before the woman in the costume appeared. But she has also tested positive for the virus and is convinced she was infected in Kaiser.
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