At least 43 staff members of the Kaiser Permanente San Jose emergency department tested positive for COVID-19 last week. The unlikely culprit for the explosive outbreak? An inflatable Christmas costume.
COVID-19 can live on quite different surfaces, especially porous or textured like textiles and paper. (Although we are learning: certain variants of coronavirus can live for hours or days outside the body, depending on the stress.) But the most common carrier for COVID-19 is still respiratory droplets in the air – one might suspect that someone can wear an air-powered holiday costume in an emergency can be a disaster recipe.
“A staff member briefly appeared in the emergency department on December 25, wearing an air-powered costume,” Irene Chavez, senior vice president and area manager of Kaiser’s San Jose Medical Center, told the Chronicle. “Any exposure, if it had occurred, would have been completely innocent and quite accidental, as the individual had no COVID symptoms and was only trying to increase the spirits of those around them during a very stressful time.”
Last week, it was confirmed that 43 staff members at the South Bay Emergency Room tested positive for the new respiratory disease. Among those infected were doctors, nurses, technicians and medical assistants on the premises. As Chavez notes, individuals with confirmed positive results were asked, as well as those who may have been in contact with the disease – to follow strict isolation protocols.
Fortunately, because Kaiser Permanente’s health workers are offered weekly COVID-19 tests, the outbreak seems to have been quickly recognized and has made it possible for different inclusion strategies to fall into place in a timely manner; however, this was not so much the case for the Orinda and Laguna Honda-skilled nursing homes during infancy.
“All of our health professionals will be offered weekly for COVID-19 and rapid testing for anyone with symptoms or exposure to a person with COVID-19,” Chavez continued. “Masks are needed in all areas and we are further tuning our processes and common spaces, such as staff break rooms, to limit staff gatherings.”
Suffice it to say that she also added that they will no longer allow air-powered costumes in the building (for now obvious reasons).
According to Chavez, about 40,000 Kaiser Permanent health workers in the Bay have received coronavirus vaccinations, with additional implications – including the second dose doses that work to Santa Clara County health workers working in the COVID-19 epicenter in the region – in the future.
Although Moderna, the only pharmaceutical company that may distribute the vaccine for “emergency use” by the FDA, requires that the vaccine be administered in two doses, studies show that even a single dose is quite effective.
Related: Orinda Nursing Home now has 49 COVID cases; Laguna Honda has 16 [April of 2020]
New outbreak at Laguna Honda infects 50 and counts, kills 3 elderly people
Teachers, police and food service workers can get the following to get COVID vaccination in California
Image: Thanks to Getty Images via Maksim Tkachenko