SAN JOSE – About the only sign of holiday cheering on Christmas morning in the emergency department in Kaiser Permanente San Jose was a string of wreaths tackled at the doctor’s station.
When a staff member came down the aisle on the morning of December 25, dressed in an inflatable Christmas tree costume, the moment of liveliness was a welcome respite.
“She just spread joy,” said a nurse who worked that morning.
Instead, her battery-powered, air-powered costume spread the coronavirus through the ER. In the days that followed, 44 staff members became infected and Kaiser announced Sunday night that one of the employees working Christmas Day had passed away, a tragedy that is making headlines worldwide. It was not clear on Monday whether visitors or patients at the unit were also infected.
It’s the costume driven by the air by an employee in the emergency department of the Kaiser Permanent San Jose Medical Center. It appears that employee unknowingly had covid, now 43 employees have covid .Kaiser investigated whether costume blower helped spread the virus. pic.twitter.com/DLLi8z5e2T
– Marianne Favro (@mariannefavro) January 3, 2021
Many of the sick staff members had already received the first of two doses of COVID vaccination in the past week, Kaiser said, but its partial effectiveness – which usually starts in ten days – has not yet kicked in. The woman in the costume had no symptoms at the time, but then tested positive.
In an interview Monday, the nurse – who did not want to be named because she feared for her job – gave one of the first reports on how the deadly virus spread. She explained that the woman in the costume appeared spontaneously between 09:00 and 10:00 at the central nursing station. The nurse was wearing a mask and a face shield when she was briefly dating the costumed woman about six feet away, she said.
Two days later, on December 27, the nurse became ill and has since been ill with mild COVID-19 symptoms. According to her, most of her colleagues have started to feel sick, and although she is aware of colleagues who have severe symptoms, she does not believe that anyone is being admitted to hospital.
How can a tree suit with a red nose and silly smile become a deadly super-spreader? A fan that works through batteries helps inflate the tree and may have spewed out viral droplets beyond the normal person-to-person distribution.
The nurse emphasized that there was no party or gathering around the woman in the costume, and that her arrival in the tree suit was ‘intrusive’ and unplanned. Everyone in the emergency department is wearing masks, the nurse said, and “we are not cuddling.”
Early reports erroneously suggested that a party atmosphere in the emergency department ‘painted us in the light of irresponsible when we were saving our lives. We do not see our families. It showed us that we do not care about our community. ”
The annual Christmas party had long been canceled, and unlike in recent years, no one wore Santa hats or candlestick headbands in the ERS – it’s too easy to get entangled in face shields and protective breaths.
The yellow Christmas tree was ‘so innocent’, the nurse said.
As she describes it, ‘you see this Christmas tree coming down on you, and it makes you smile. It was a brief moment of liveliness, and you started working again. ‘
The death of a staff member – reportedly a registration clerk – was a devastating blow to hospital staff who were already exhausted after treating COVID patients for 10 months and a major burden for the woman in the costume.
The tragedy is like a ‘death in the family’, the nurse said.
“We’re physically exhausted and emotionally burdened already, and it’s just more above,” she said. “People do not realize the toll it takes and exactly what we need to get in and do what we do. Yes, we have chosen this profession and we are all very good at our job, but that does not make it any less stressful or less emotional or less devastating when you lose a family member. ”
The Santa Clara County Department of Health is investigating the outbreak.
“This is, of course, an extremely unusual situation in which a well-meaning staff member acts alone without prior notice or approval,” according to a statement from Irene Chavez, senior vice president and area manager, Kaiser Permanente San Jose Medical Center.
The hospital is conducting contact detection to notify staff or patients who have been exposed and is adding weekly staff tests.
The hospital did not answer Monday whether the woman in the costume worked a shift that day. It is said that an investigation is underway into whether the virus has spread further than those who worked that morning. It also did not explain the coronavirus testing policy, which according to the nurse was a sore spot for a number of nurses who complained that the hospital only started testing staff more closely after the outbreak.
Monica Gandhi, an expert in infectious diseases at UC San Francisco, said the outbreak was a combination of ‘so many unfortunate things’, including the unusual air-blowing costume and the timing of the vaccination.
Although there is a slight difference depending on whether the vaccine is from Pfizer or Moderna, it usually takes about two weeks to be about 80-90% effective. Within the first 10-14 days, it is closer to 50% effective, she said.
“That’s why some of these health workers got one dose and still got COVID,” Gandhi said.
The Kaiser nurse said she was still surprised that this costume with the battery-powered fan could have caused so much havoc and did not understand how people who worked later in the day also got sick.
“It just doesn’t seem entirely plausible that it was all her, because it was just a moment in time compared to what we were dealing with all the time,” the nurse said. ‘How can it be if it happens at 9 o’clock in the morning that people are infected at three o’clock in the afternoon? Can this happen? Yes. But was it tragically coincidental or something else? We just do not know. ”
Staff Writers Emily DeRuy and Evan Webeck contributed to this report.