Betty LaBombard, a longtime waitress at Woolworth’s, celebrated her 95th birthday March 1 at the Vermont nursing home where she had been a fixture for eight years, often perched in her wheelchair near the fourth-floor nurses’ station. Her niece brought her a chocolate cupcake.
The New York Times tracked the outbreak at Burlington, following who lived and who died, interviewing family members and listening to their conference calls with the facility’s administrators. What emerged is an intimate account of how the virus moved through a nursing home, how operators struggled to subdue it and how residents’ families split over their performance and the outcome.
Dr. Richard Feifer, chief medical officer at Genesis, said the company had met or exceeded guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in responding to the coronavirus. But those guidelines, he contended, were slow to catch up with what was happening on the ground. “It is frustrating because we would love definitive answers,” Amanda Nagell, the home’s nursing director, told families April 15. “We just don’t know. And that’s the scary part.”Around town, the Burlington center, bought by Genesis in 2016, was known as the nursing home of last resort.
Still, some people did not want to leave. LaBombard adopted newcomers, called her room “home” and refused her family’s attempts to move her. “This is something that still keeps me up at night,” said Dr. Mark Pitcher, an internist and the home’s medical director of 25 years, who knew all the residents by their first names.
Willard rushed over. She said her aunt’s roommate was still there; the curtain between the two beds was open; the room door was open. She said she was given a mask and gown, but staff members were walking around without masks or gloves. Not necessarily, Farnsworth responded. It depended on residents’ wishes, and the home could treat most residents.No. The home had to assume others in the building already had the virus, the director said. And the state did not have enough tests to screen all residents.
Diane Santulli, her daughter, said the family had nothing but praise for the home’s staff. “We just thought they were angels,” she said. Day 19: On April 3, the home obtained tests for all residents. Twenty-two were positive, including seven with no symptoms. McKenna tested positive again; so did her asymptomatic sister, Anna Stoll.Day 20: “This should have been done three weeks ago,” a man complained on a Zoom call. “I know the resources were hard to get, but this was an epicenter.”
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