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SAN JOSE – Pretty much the only sign of holiday cheer on Christmas morning in the emergency department at Kaiser Permanente San Jose was a string of wreaths nailed to the medics’ station.
So, when a staff member leaped into the hallway on the morning of December 25th dressed in an inflatable Christmas tree costume, the moment of lightness was a welcome respite.
“She was just spreading joy,” said a nurse who was working that morning.
Instead, his battery-powered and air-powered suit may have spread the coronavirus in the emergency room. In the days that followed, 44 staff members were infected and on Sunday evening Kaiser announced that one of the employees working on Christmas Day had passed away, a tragedy that made headlines around the world. It was not clear on Monday whether visitors or patients on the unit were also infected.
It’s the pneumatic suit an employee wore in the emergency department at Kaiser Permanente San Jose Medical Center on Christmas Day to spread joy. It turns out the employee unknowingly had covid, now 43 employees have covid. Kaiser investigating whether the costume blower helped spread the virus. pic.twitter.com/DLLi8z5e2T
– Marianne Favro (@mariannefavro) January 3, 2021
Many disgusted staff had already received the first of two doses of COVID vaccination the week before, Kaiser said, but its partial effectiveness – which usually starts in about 10 days – has not started. The woman in the costume had no symptoms at the time, but then tested positive.
In an interview on Monday, the nurse – who didn’t want to be named because she feared for her job – gave one of the first internal accounts of how the deadly virus could have spread. She explained that between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m., the woman in the costume spontaneously appeared at the central nurses’ station. The nurse was wearing a mask and face shield when she briefly interacted with the costumed woman about six feet away, she said.
Two days later, on December 27, the nurse fell ill and has since suffered mild symptoms of COVID-19. Most of her coworkers started feeling sick around the same time, she said, and although she is aware of coworkers who have severe symptoms, she doesn’t think any of them are. between them is hospitalized.
How could a tree suit with a red nose and a silly grin turn out to be a deadly super-spreader? A battery-powered ventilator helps inflate the tree and may have spewed viral droplets further than normal person-to-person spread.
The nurse pointed out that there was no party or gathering around the costumed woman and that her arrival in the tree costume was “impulsive” and unplanned. Everyone in the emergency room wears masks, the nurse said, and “we don’t kiss.”
Early reports mistakenly suggesting a festive atmosphere in the emergency department “painted us with irresponsibility as we strove to save lives. We don’t see our families. It portrayed us as not caring about our community.
The annual Christmas party was long canceled, and unlike in years past, no one wore a Santa hat or candy cane headband in the emergency room – it’s too easy to get tangled in face shields and respirators. protection.
The flippant Christmas tree was “so innocent,” the nurse said.
As she described it, “You just see that Christmas tree come and leap towards you, and it makes you smile. It was a brief moment of lightness and you get back to work.
The death of a staff member – apparently a check-in clerk – has been a blow to hospital staff who are already exhausted after treating COVID patients for 10 months and remains “a heavy burden” for them. the woman in costume.
The tragedy is like “a death in the family,” said the nurse.
“We’re physically exhausted and emotionally already taxed, and it’s getting more and more,” she says. “People don’t realize how much it costs and what it takes to get in and do what we’re doing. Yes, we have chosen this profession and we are all very good at our jobs, but that doesn’t make it any less stressful or less emotional or less devastating when you lose a member of your family.
The Santa Clara County Health Department is investigating the outbreak.
“Obviously, this is a very unusual situation involving a well-meaning staff member acting on their own without notice or approval,” said a statement from Irene Chavez, senior vice president and regional manager of the Kaiser. Permanent San Jose Medical Center.
The hospital performs a contact tracing to educate and test any exposed staff or patient and adds weekly testing for staff.
The hospital did not respond on Monday if the woman in the suit was working a shift that day. He said he was investigating whether the virus had spread beyond those who were working that morning. He also did not explain his coronavirus testing policy, which the nurse said was a sore point for a number of nurses who complained that the hospital had not started more rigorous testing of staff. until after the epidemic.
Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease specialist at UC San Francisco, said the outbreak appeared to be a combination of “so many unlucky things,” including the unusual air-blast costume and the vaccine dose schedule.
While there is slight variation depending on whether the vaccine is from Pfizer or Moderna, each typically takes around two weeks to be around 80-90% effective. In the first 10 to 14 days, its effectiveness is closer to 50%, she said.
“That’s why some of these healthcare workers got a dose and still got COVID,” Gandhi said.
Nurse Kaiser said she was still baffled that this costume with the battery-powered fan could have wreaked so much havoc and doesn’t understand how people who were working later in the day also got sick.
“It just doesn’t seem entirely plausible that that’s all her because it was just a moment compared to what we’re still dealing with,” the nurse said. “How could it be that if this happened at 9 a.m., people were infected by 3 p.m.?” Could this happen? Yes. But was it tragically a coincidence or something else? We just don’t know.
Editors Emily DeRuy and Evan Webeck contributed to this report.
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