Employees of the Kaiser Permanent San Jose Medical Center spoke on Tuesday about a lack of COVID-19 testing in the workplace after a fatal outbreak in the hospital’s emergency department.
At least 60 staff members at the hospital have tested positive since the outbreak of Christmas Day, including one who died, Kaiser said Tuesday. Several ER nurses have told NBC Bay Area that they feel Kaiser has done routine testing of staff over the past few months, it could have prevented such a major outbreak.
“I feel that it could have been prevented or really minimized if tested in advance,” said one employee.
On Christmas Day, an employee with an air-powered tree costume walked into the hallways of the emergency department at the hospital. Kaiser said the costume is likely responsible for employees getting COVID-19, including a registration clerk who passed away Sunday.
Some nurses said they felt the employee wearing the costume had become a scapegoat. They also said before the outbreak that they had not been tested regularly.
Kaiser said before the outbreak it followed the Santa Clara County order and said in a statement: “Although the order states that health care providers may ask workers to wait up to 14 days between tests, we offer health workers to be tested. to become. weekly if they will. ‘
Kaiser nurses said the hospital does not make it easy for them to be tested like other hospitals do.
Since October, the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, O’Connor Hospital and St. Louise Regional Hospital in Gilroy tested employees who work directly with patients every two weeks. It is necessary.
Juana Castillo, who works with Enterprise Employee Health at all three hospitals, said it is proactive and, in line with testing, is bearing fruit.
“We have a very low positivity rate due to our asymptomatic testing of our employees,” she said.
Kaiser said he was testing all employees in the emergency department as part of the investigation into the outbreak.